EMAT-guided wave approach for detecting and quality evaluation of the laser beam butt welding line on the inner surface of the steel pipe

Furusawa, Akinori   ; Nishimura, Akihiko  ; Torimoto, Kazuhiro; Takenaka, Yusuke*; Saijo, Shingo*; Toyama, Ryoji*

The aim of this work presented here is to investigate the applicability of the guided wave testing to detect and evaluate the quality of laser beam butt welding line. First, four test pipes were prepared. All of the pipes were laser beam butt welded from inside of the pipe using laser torch. Two pipes of them were high-quality welded, the others were low-quality. Two different pipe-wall-thicknesses were in each quality. Secondly, Laser beam butt welding line detection and the quality evaluation experiments were performed. T(0,1) mode guided wave was excited and received by electromagnetic acoustic transducer array. Finally, the experimental results were analyzed and issues concerning with the applicability of the guided wave testing to detection and quality evaluation of the laser butt welding line were discussed.