Feasibility of High Frequency Acoustic Imaging for Inspection of Containments

Abstract

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide assistance in their assessment of the effects of potential degradation on the structural integrity and Ieaktightness of metal containment vessels and steel liners of concrete containment in nuclear power plants. One of the program objectives is to identify a technique(s) for inspection of inaccessible portions of the containment pressure boundary. Acoustic imaging has been identified as one of these potential techniques. A numerical feasibility study investigated the use of high-frequency bistatic acoustic imaging techniques for inspection of inaccessible portions of the metallic pressure boundary of nuclear power plant containment. The range-dependent version of the OASES Code developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was utilized to perform a series of numerical simulations. OASES is a well developed and extensively tested code for evaluation of the acoustic field in a system of stratified fluid and/or elastic layers. Using the code, an arbitrary number of fluid or solid elastic layers are interleaved, with the outer layers modeled as halfspaces. High frequency vibrational sources were modeled to simulate elastic waves in the steel. The received field due to an arbitrary source array can be calculated at arbitrary depth and range positions. In this numerical study, waves that reflect and scatter from surface roughness caused by modeled degradations (e.g., corrosion) are detected and used to identify and map the steel degradation. Variables in the numerical study included frequency, flaw size, interrogation distance, and sensor incident angle.Based on these analytical simulations, it is considered unlikely that acoustic imaging technology can be used to investigate embedded steel liners of reinforced concrete containment. The thin steel liner and high signal losses to the concrete make this application difficult. Results for portions of steel containment embedded in concrete are more encouraging in that they indicate that the intrinsic backscatter from degradations representing thickness reductions from 10 to 80% the shell thickness are sufficient to permit detection. It is recommended that a controlled experimental program be conducted in which sensor levels are calibrated against degradations to determine if current sensor technology can input sufficient power into the system to provide return levels within the dynamic range of the receivers.