Ultrasonic technique for inspection of GPHS capsule girth weld integrity.

摘要

An innovative nondestructive examination (NDE) technique for the inspection of integrity of General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) capsule girth welds (Figure 1) was developed employing a Lamb (plate) wave as the mode of the sound propagation. Reliability of the Lamb wave technique was tested on GPHS capsules using plutonium pallet simulators. All ten capsules, which were previously rejected, passed ultrasonic (UT) inspection using the Lamb wave technique.