Objectives

Project objectives

The main aim of ADVISE is to enable the ultrasonic inspection of complex structured materials so as to improve confidence in inspection of Generation II and III European reactors.

ADVISE will enable:

• The optimisation of the performance of existing ultrasonic inspections, where better signal-to-noise ratio, deeper penetration depth and more reliable diagnostics are required, and
• The application of ultrasound to cases where it cannot be applied today and where the industry currently must resort to radiography, which is highly disruptive and has certain imminent dangers due to the radiation used.

ADVISE has four main technical objectives:

• Increase the comprehension and modelling of complex structures for accurate prediction
• Develop new tools for material characterisation and input data
• Provide advanced inspection methods
• Provide defect evaluation methods and assisted diagnostics

Besides these technical objectives, ADVISE also has an educational and dissemination objective of improving, harmonising and sharing knowledge about ultrasonic inspection of complex structured materials while ensuring results uptake by the industry and in particular by inspection service providers. ADVISE will therefore address on the one hand the scientific and higher education community and on the other hand the industrial stakeholders.

Expected results

ADVISE proposes a coordinated and novel approach which will enable the delivery of a set of techniques and methods answering the industrial and European endeavour to keep on improving and maintaining power plants safety and reliability across its territories. ADVISE will address the current inspection challenges by delivering documented capabilities for the identified classes of inspection problems, demonstrators on industrially relevant example cases and dedicated software tools.

The main output of the project is a step change improvement in performance in terms of inspectable depth, defect detection and characterisation accuracy. For austeno-ferritic cast components, an increase of the inspectable depth of 70 to 85 mm is aimed for. Equally importantly, the in-situ characterisation for specific inspections will provide the confidence needed to make safe decisions from measured indications without the significant conservatism that is needed in many cases currently.

Concretely, the following results will be delivered by ADVISE:

1. Methods to:
• Measure the properties of NPP materials that cause difficulties for their inspection by ultrasound, including grain size, wave speed and attenuation and their spatial variations
• Simulate ultrasound propagation, attenuation, scattering and interactions with defects in the materials under concern; these methods will be vital tools for the evaluation and optimisation of any target inspections
2. Simulation tools, imaging tools and diagnostic tools (software and hardware) dedicated to complex materials
3. Physical demonstration examples using real materials and representative target defects, showcasing the new methods and optimised NDE capabilities
4. Public workshops, training sessions and publications for broad dissemination.

The CIVA platform and the M2M acquisition systems are the natural receptacles of the project results. The CIVA software will be enriched with new functionalities issued by the project. Simulation codes developed by the partners will be connected in the platform.

The ADVISE imaging and diagnostic tools suitable to online applications will be integrated in the M2M portable acquisition system while those relevant to offline applications will be connected to the CIVA analysis framework.