An Ultrasonic Viewing System in Liquid Sodium

Taguchi, Junzo; Uesugi, Nobuo; Miyazawa, Tomotaka; Sato, Keiji; Horikoshi, Shigeru

doi:10.1109/tns.1980.4330934

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Over the past 30 years, a number of countries including Japan, India, Lithuania/Belgium, France, and Germany have pursued the development of ultrasonic ranging and/or imaging systems for liquid-metal cooled fast reactors (Taguchi et al 1980;Hans et al 1984;McKnight et al 1984;McKnight 1988;Swaminathan et al 1990;Wessels 1991;Lennox et al 1993;Rajendran et al 1996;Karasawa et al 2000;Joo and Lee 2005;Kazys et al 2005;Kazys et al 2006;Kazys et al 2007;Mazeika et al 2007). An initial assessment of these activities is given in a paper by Bond et al (2007b) and a more extensive review is provided below.…”

Section: Summary Of International Research and Development Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The material must be wetable by liquid sodium to exclude gas layers and permit maximum acoustic coupling. To this end, a variety of faceplate and/or faceplate coating materials have been investigated including polished nickel (Taguchi et al 1980), diamond-like carbon (used for lead bismuth cooled reactors) (Kazys et al 2006), gold-coated invar (McKnight 1988), and thermally etched stainless steel with a 1-micron sacrificial coating of gold (Day and Smith 1974a). Thermal etching of the stainless steel in vacuum appears necessary to remove the thin layer of CrO on stainless steel that prevents wetting.…”

Section: Faceplatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, an intermediate, ductile layer is fabricated between the back side of the transducer faceplate and the front side of the acoustic transducer. High-temperature grease (Taguchi et al 1980) and various silver solder alloys (Day and Smith 1974a;Ono et al 2006) have been used for this purpose. There is a special appeal to the use of non-metallic compounds (e.g., high viscosity greases) for this layer.…”

Section: Faceplate-transducer Coupling Layermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Under-Sodium Viewing: A Review of Ultrasonic Imaging Technology for Liquid Metal Fast Reactors

Griffin¹,

Posakony²,

Chien³

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Executive SummaryThis current report is a summary of information obtained in the "Information Capture" task of the U.S. DOE-funded "Under Sodium Viewing (USV) Project." The goal of the multi-year USV project is to design, build, and demonstrate a state-of-the-art prototype ultrasonic viewing system tailored for periodic reactor core in-service monitoring and maintenance inspections. The study seeks to optimize system parameters, improve performance, and re-establish this key technology area which will be required to support any new U.S. liquid-metal cooled fast reactors.The earliest information presented herein dates from the early 1970s when the DOE Hanford Site and Argonne National Laboratory were supporting instrumentation development for sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs). The most recent U.S. advanced liquid metal reactor (ALMR) design was the Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM). The U.S.-sponsored design effort was discontinued in 1995; however, General Electric (GE) continued development up to year 2000. A number of other countries (especially India, Japan, France, and Great Britain) have built and operated fast, metal-cooled reactors and supporting diagnostic instrumentation for in-service inspections. Piezoelectric transducers have been reported in systems used to: (i) acquire in-core images; (ii) perform ultrasonic NDE inspections; and (iii) measure liquid sodium levels, detect structural anomalies, and detect leaks.This study has served to identify important design parameters and options for an ultrasonic USV system. These include:1. The preferred piezoelectric material for liquid sodium temperatures up to 260°C is lead zirconate titanate (PZT). Higher Curie temperature (T c ) materials such as lithium niobate and lead metaniobate have also been used.2. Most demonstrated USV ultrasonic transducers are of the direct sodium immersion type. Only a few designs use an ultrasonic waveguide to isolate the transducer from the molten sodium.3. Poor sodium wetting of the transducer face has been an issue. Degraded wetting results in inefficient mechanical (acoustic) coupling between the transducer and the liquid sodium working fluid. Solutions have required either coating the transducer face (e.g., with evaporated or sputtered gold) or bonding a metal diaphragm to the transducer face (e.g., stainless steel or nickel).4. Thermal shock damage to the piezoelectric transducer is an important issue. Fracture of piezoelectric ceramics due to high thermal gradients/transients or thermal expansion mismatches at the transducer face or backing layer must be considered early in the design process.5. Cable length between the transducer and ultrasonic transceiver has a major impact on received signal amplitude. The minute electrical charges generated by the piezoelectric transducer dictate use of lowcapacitance, radiation-resistant, high-temperature cables, and cable length must be kept as short as possible. Impedance matching and signal conditioning must be considered.6. To date, most ultrasonic USV systems have ...

show abstract

Section: Summary Of International Research and Development Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Faceplatementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Faceplate-transducer Coupling Layermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Under-Sodium Viewing: A Review of Ultrasonic Imaging Technology for Liquid Metal Fast Reactors

Griffin¹,

Posakony²,

Chien³

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…During the operation of a sodium fast reactor various system components can be displaced, for example, the head of a Fuel SubAssembly (FSA) may undergo a lateral shift from its original position due to the fast neutron induced damage on its structural material. Visualization based on ultrasonic imaging has been found feasible to guide robotic arm motion and for the inspection of components [5][6][7][8]. This series of needs has resulted in development of various under sodium measurement and viewing capabilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This series of needs has resulted in development of various under sodium measurement and viewing capabilities. The approach was extensively used [6][7][8][9][10][11] in a number of countries (especially US, India, Japan, France, Germany and Great Britain) for inspection in fast reactors from 1970 to the 1990s. During the same period the ASME also introduced an inspection code which has an emphasis on reliable methods for inspection of NPP components [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High temperature ultrasonic immersion measurements using a BS-PT based piezoelectric transducer without a delay line

Bilgunde

Bond

2018

AIP Conference Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Detection of subassembly bowing in a fast breeder reactor using glancing angle ultrasonic imaging

Chaitanya

Kumar

2021

Annals of Nuclear Energy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An Ultrasonic Viewing System in Liquid Sodium

Cited by 12 publications

References 1 publication

Under-Sodium Viewing: A Review of Ultrasonic Imaging Technology for Liquid Metal Fast Reactors

Under-Sodium Viewing: A Review of Ultrasonic Imaging Technology for Liquid Metal Fast Reactors

High temperature ultrasonic immersion measurements using a BS-PT based piezoelectric transducer without a delay line

Detection of subassembly bowing in a fast breeder reactor using glancing angle ultrasonic imaging

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About