A guideline of ultrasonic inspection on butt welded plates

Abstract

This paper explained the procedure to carry out the ultrasonic inspection for single and double-V butt welded plates in detail by including the calculation of skip distance, stand-off, interpretation from plotting system, and the preparation of full inspection report as well. In addition, few inspections were compared on butt welded plate single and double-V to determine which is the most suitable, accurate and precise reading obtained. The comparisons were made between scheme answer from Sirim inspector, X-ray film, data that obtained from ultrasonic inspection and calculation by mathematical formulas and using plotting system. Mathematical formulas and plotting system was utilized to obtained the distance of stand-off (Soff) and skip distance, (Smax) whereas the plotting system were applied to locate the defects based on their S max and S off, and also to determine the depth, d and radius, r. The defects of single-V and double-V butt welding inspected by the ultrasonic technique were then compared with those obtained from the radiographic film while a good agreement was observed. However, the ultrasonic inspection proved to be much more sensitive than the radiographic inspection. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.