Launchpad, March - April 2008
For a full list of proposed, active and closed projects see here
Long range ultrasonic condition monitoring of boiler and heat exchanger tubes
Launched: January 2008
Cost per Sponsor: £20 000 pa, two annual payments
Project Leader: Chiraz Ennaceur
Tubes are an integral component of engineering assets such as boilers, heat exchangers, condensers and high and low pressure heaters. These tubes often operate in extreme and abrasive environments and are subject to various failure mechanisms. The most common ones are internal or external erosion, corrosion, mechanical wear and fretting due to vibration. There are existing techniques for the Non Destructive Testing (NDT) of tubes such as ultrasonic Internal Rotary Inspection System (IRIS), Eddy Current Testing (ECT), Remote Field Eddy Current (REFC), Flux Leakage Method (FLM) and laser surface profiling. However these NDT methods have shown various limitations in detecting, sizing and localising the defects mentioned above. The proposed project will research, examine and validate the use of a new inspection method for tubes based on ultrasonic guided waves. This will make tube inspection more reliable and faster thus ensuring reduced downtime and increased efficiency for inspection of tube materials (ferrous and non-ferrous) without the limitations of the current techniques.
