Siemens Energy, Inc.

Siemens Corporation

Larry C Himes

Waheed A Abbasi

Shaohua Kevin Zhou

Michael J Metala

Jingdan Zhang

El Mahjoub Rasselkorde

Dorin Comaniciu

Michael F Fair

Moritz Michael Knorr

Chris Vierck

Peter Faltin

Daniel S Morgan

An industrial ultrasonic inspection system is capable of scanning for discontinuities in relatively thick solid objects such as solid core steel alloy turbine shafts. A phased array probe located on the turbine shaft periphery transmits ultrasonic pulses in a sector-shaped scanning field within the shaft that includes the inner 50% core volume that is of special interest in non-destructive evaluation and inspection. Staggered pulse firing alone or in combination with variable pulse repetition frequency (PRF) may be utilized in order to balance image quality with inspection speed. Discontinuities are identified by analysis of reflected echo waveform energy. Discontinuity size and position within the inspected object is correlated with an equivalent reflector size (ERS) by the Distance-Gain-Size (DGS) method.

System and method for industrial ultrasonic inspection using phased array probe and distance-gain-size flaw sizing

A method and apparatus for three-dimensional (3D) visualization and analysis for automatic non-destructive examination of a rotor bore using ultrasound. Data is acquired by scanning the rotor bore with an ultrasound pulser/transducer producing a plurality of one-dimensional ultrasound scans, each scan having a plurality of sample points. Each sample point is associated with a voxel of a regular 3D grid having a plurality of voxels. A Gaussian kernel is associated with each sample point and a value for a particular voxel is determined based on a weighted sum of sample points whose kernels cover the particular voxel. The values for the other voxels of the regular 3D grid are determined similarly. A 3D visualization of the rotor bore can be displayed to a user.

Three-dimensional visualization and analysis method and system for non-destructive examination of a rotor bore using ultrasound

A method and apparatus for three-dimensional visualization and analysis for automatic non-destructive examination of a solid Rotor using ultrasonic phased array is disclosed. Data is acquired by scanning a solid rotor with a phased array ultrasound transducer producing a plurality of two dimensional ultrasound scans. Each of a plurality of sample points of a plurality of two dimensional ultrasound scans are associated with a corresponding 3D image point of a regular grid. A kernel function for each of the plurality of sample points defining a size and shape of a kernel located at the corresponding image point is determined. A weight is assigned to each kernel which, in one embodiment, is based on the sample point value. A value for each image point of the regular 3D grid is determined based on kernels overlapping each image point. A three-dimensional volume representing the solid rotor is then visualized.

Method and apparatus for three-dimensional visualization and analysis for automatic non-destructive examination of a solid rotor using ultrasonic phased array

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Greensburg, PA, United States of America

Larry C Himes