Guided waves based diagnostic imaging of circumferential cracks in small-diameter pipe.

To improve the safety and reliability of pipeline structures, much work has been done using ultrasonic guided waves methods for pipe inspection. Though good for evaluating the defects in the pipes, most of the methods lack the capability to precisely identify the defects in the pipe features like welds or supports. Therefore, a novel guided wave based cross-sectional diagnostic imaging algorithm was developed to improve the ability of circumferential cracks identification in the pipe features. To ensure the accuracy of the imaging, an angular profile-based frequency selection method is presented. As validation, the approach was employed to identify the presence and location of a small circumferential crack with 1.13% cross sectional area (CSA) in the welding zone of a 48 mm diameter type 304 stainless steel pipe. Accurate identification results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed approach.