Ultrasonic weld inspection with synthetic aperture focussing techniques -SAFT-

SAFT was originally developed by the University of Michigan. The work was continued by Southwest Research Institute and Batelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory. The method was adapted by IzfP and with a new hard- and software design experiences could be gathered since 1981. SAFT has been applied on components like pressure vessel, tube sheet plate, turbines, within international round robin programmes at PISC II-components, CCSS-testblocks or at the large scale vessel at Stuttgart. Because of the B-scan image representation size, shape, depth extension and orientation can be measured. The lateral resolution over the total inspection range is one wavelength or using contact technique probes of 1/3 probe size diameter. (IZFP)