Abstract
As a nondestructive detecting method, ultrasonic detection has been widely adopted in concrete structure detections. This approach would not damage the structural integrity, and could fulfill most of the detecting requirements of various concrete structures. However, for mass concrete and complicated concrete structural elements, there are still many problems of detection to be solved, such as the operating position of detection could not be achieved easily for technicians, especially in some narrow spaces, or the volume of elements might be quite large so that the detecting distance is far beyond the effective detecting distance of traditional transducers. After researching the technical performances of traditional ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic detecting method, a brand new type of ultrasonic transducer adopted spherical piezoelectric ceramic chips has been developed. The transducer could be embedded inside concrete structure, and motivate or receive ultrasonic signal in all directions pair with external or internal transducers. Testing with the embedded transducers would not be limited by on-site conditions or other enviorenmental conditions. The transducer could be used in realtime systems for monitoring or detecting internal compactness situation of concrete elements. The technical characteristics of spherical transducer have been verified by a series of experiments in laboratory. Moreover, the detecting method with spherical transducer has been proposed, which could be used in the inspection for mass concrete and complicated structural concrete elements. Meanwhile, the appropriate technical schemes for reactor containment of nuclear power plant have been designed and has already been applied in nuclear power plant.
Highlights
Various structural modes such as mass concrete structures, steel plate-concrete (SC) structures, permanent formwork concrete structures and other types have been adopted in the nuclear power plants under construction or to be built in China
Additional, some locations of tested structure are difficult for technicians to achieve, like the edge area between the foundation and the reactor containment of nuclear power plant, where the space is too narrow for technician to perform detection
The transducer could be used pair with other spherical transducers embedded in array inside the structure, or with plane transducer handled by technician from the outside surface of structure to detect the compactness of mass and complicated concrete structures
Summary
Various structural modes such as mass concrete structures, steel plate-concrete (SC) structures, permanent formwork concrete structures and other types have been adopted in the nuclear power plants under construction or to be built in China. Voids and cavities are observed in some areas especially like corners due to the special and complicated structure. These defects would impact the lifetime of structure. With the new transducers and methods, the detection of internal defects could be and conveniently performed. The spherical emedded ultrasonic transducer and detecting method could be adopted in many construction areas, such as nuclear power plant, bridge, dam, tunnel, etc. Additional, some locations of tested structure are difficult for technicians to achieve, like the edge area between the foundation and the reactor containment of nuclear power plant, where the space is too narrow for technician to perform detection
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