Abstract
The piping inspection in nuclear power plants is mainly performed in contact with ultrasonic wedge transducers. During the scanning, the fixed shape of the wedges cannot conform to the irregular surfaces and complex geometries of the components (butt weld, nozzle, elbow). The surface irregularities lead to thickness variations of the coupling medium that result in beam distortions and losses of sensitivity. A 3‐D ultrasonic flexible phased‐array is presented here and applied to the ultrasonic inspection of a welded pipe. This example of a complex geometry inspection is typical of the field of application for such sensor. The phased‐array probe is flexible to conform to a complex profile and to minimize the thickness of the coupling layer. The independent piezoelectric elements composing the radiating surface are mechanically assembled to build an articulated structure. A profilometer, embedded in the transducer, measures the local surface distortion allowing to compute in real‐time the optimized delay laws and to compensate the distortions of the 2D or 3D profiles. Those delay laws transferred to the UT‐acquisition system are applied in real‐time to the piezoelectric elements. The experiments presented here aim to determine the detection abilities of this technique using multi‐shot configurations (e.g. angular scanning, several points focusing).
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