As phased array technology becomes more widely accepted in the nondestructive testing industry and its use becomes increasingly widespread, we’ve continued to expand our manufacturing and engineering resources to develop custom phased array (PA) and custom conventional ultrasonic (UT) transducers for challenging applications. Designed and manufactured in the US, our experts work directly with our customers and our engineering teams to find solutions to customer inspection problems and requests. To date, we’ve designed and manufactured custom transducers for the aerospace, power generation, and petrochemical industries in applications including manufacturing, renewable energy, and research.
Our custom transducers come in many varieties, including immersion, matrix, contact, and integrated wedge versions. If you have parts or components with complex geometries, we can also custom design probes to fit many area and size constraints.
How We Can Help
Boiling water reactor (BWR) nozzle inspections and components can degrade over time, stemming from general corrosion to fatigue cycling. In a BWR reactor, there are multiple nozzles that must be inspected. The nozzle types include feedwater, core spray, recirculation, main steam, and drain. The inspections are complicated due to the difficult-to-inspect austenitic and dissimilar welds, poor accessibility, high temperature, and radioactive dosage. Cracks in the nozzle sections can result in loss of integrity and radiological contamination, causing unscheduled generator shutdown or even a catastrophic failure.
Our customer supplied us with a number of specifications for the probe, including how the probe needed to attach to the holder as well as the acoustic requirements. We integrated these specifications into the probe’s design to create a spring-loaded phased array probe and fixture to perform simultaneous pitch-catch circumferential and axial inside diameter inspections in a boiling water reactor BWR nozzle. We also completed a similar probe design using conventional ultrasound instead of phased array for a time-of-flight diffraction (TOFD) application. Tailoring our probe offerings provides a streamlined approach that enables us to meet our customer’s high expectations.
Conclusion
Our core mission is to serve our customers whether it’s through off-the-shelf instruments and probes to custom made solutions. Do you have a challenging inspection application? Let us know!
