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Reliability assessment of non-destructive testing (NDT) for the inspection of weld joints in the hydroelectric turbine industry

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Abstract 

Due to the importance of energy production, it is critical to reduce unnecessary or unpredicted power generation equipment outages. As a major power generation company, Hydro-Québec uses models to estimate the service life of turbine runners in order to avoid such outages. The influential inputs for these models include the characteristics of flaws present in the runners. Since Non-destructive testing (NDT) methods are used to detect and characterize these flaws, this study aims to evaluate the reliability of NDT methods for inspection of weld joints in hydraulic turbine runners. Conventional ultrasonic testing (UT), radiography testing (RT), phased array ultrasonic testing (PAUT), and PAUT using total focusing method (TFM) were compared. The NDT tests were conducted on a T-joint specimen manufactured with embedded flaws. This specimen was used to determine the probability of detection (POD) curves for volumetric flaw sizes. The results showed that array technology, PAUT or TFM, has demonstrated a detection capability (a90) around 2.5 mm, which is similar to the commonly used equivalent critical flaw size for such structure.

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Data availability

All the data sets on which the conclusions of the paper rely are presented here. Upon request, all relevant raw data will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully thank the Institute de Recherche d’Hydro-Québec (IREQ), Quebec Metallurgy Center (CMQ), Mitacs Acceleration Program, oN DuTy! Program, and the École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS) for their support and financial contribution. Additionally, the authors would like to extend their gratitude to Edward Ginzel, Jeremy Carignan, Mariana Burrowes, and Fabrice Foucher for their valuable technical discussions.

Funding

This study is financially supported under the MITACS Accelerate program in collaboration with the Institute de Recherche d’Hydro-Quebec (IREQ). The corresponding author is also financially supported by the “oN DuTy!” program. oN DuTy! is an initiative developed under the Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) of the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (http://www.ondutycanada.ca/ (accessed on 13 September 2022)).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. École de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, QC, H3C 1K3, Canada

    Mohammad Ebrahim Bajgholi & Martin Viens

  2. Institut de Recherche d’Hydro-Québec (IREQ), Varennes, QC, J3X 1S1, Canada

    Gilles Rousseau, Denis Thibault & Martin Gagnon

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  1. Mohammad Ebrahim Bajgholi
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Contributions

Conceptualization: M.E.B. Formal analysis: M.E.B. Funding acquisition: D.T. Investigation: G.R. and M.G. Methodology: M.E.B. and G.R. Software: M.E.B. Supervision: M.V. Validation: G.R. Writing—original draft: M.E.B. Writing—review and editing: G.R., M.G., D.T., and M.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Ebrahim Bajgholi.

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Bajgholi, M.E., Rousseau, G., Viens, M. et al. Reliability assessment of non-destructive testing (NDT) for the inspection of weld joints in the hydroelectric turbine industry. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 128, 4223–4233 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-12176-5

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