Ultrasonic guided wave detection of scatterers on large clad steel plates

Abstract

“Clad steel” refers to a thick carbon steel structural plate bonded to a corrosion resistant alloy (CRA) plate, such as stainless steel or titanium, and is widely used in industry to construct pressure vessels. The CRA resists the chemically aggressive environment on the interior, but cannot prevent the development of corrosion losses and cracks that limit the continued safe operation of such vessels. At present there are no practical methods to detect such defects from the exposed outer surface of the thick carbon steel plate, often necessitating removing such vessels from service and inspecting them visually from the interior. In previous research, sponsored by industry to detect and localize damage in pressurized piping systems under operational and environmental changes, we investigated a number of data-driven signal processing methods to extract damage information from ultrasonic guided wave pitch-catch records. We now apply those methods to relatively large clad steel plate specimens. We study a sparse array of wafer-type ultrasonic transducers adhered to the carbon steel surface, attempting to localize mass scatterers grease-coupled to the stainless steel surface. We discuss conditions under which localization is achieved by relatively simple first-arrival methods, and other conditions for which data-driven methods are needed; we also discuss observations of plate-like mode properties implied by these results.