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Projects: Projects for Investigator
Reference Number	EP/P01951X/1
Title	Stochastic ultrasonic scattering from the tips of rough cracks
Status	Completed
Energy Categories	Nuclear Fission and Fusion(Nuclear Fission, Nuclear supporting technologies) 100%;
Research Types	Basic and strategic applied research 100%
Science and Technology Fields	PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials) 50%; ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering) 50%;
UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation	Not Cross-cutting 100%
Principal Investigator	Professor M J S Lowe No email address given Department of Mechanical Engineering Imperial College London
Award Type	Standard
Funding Source	EPSRC
Start Date	01 April 2017
End Date	31 August 2020
Duration	41 months
Total Grant Value	£415,369
Industrial Sectors	Aerospace; Defence and Marine; Energy
Region	London
Programme	NC : Engineering
Investigators	Principal Investigator	Professor M J S Lowe , Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London (99.999%)
	Other Investigator	Professor R Craster , Mathematics, Imperial College London (0.001%)
	Industrial Collaborator	Project Contact , EDF Energy (0.000%) Project Contact , BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies Limited (0.000%) Project Contact , National Nuclear Laboratory (0.000%) Project Contact , Foster Wheeler (0.000%) Project Contact , Rolls-Royce PLC (0.000%)
Web Site
Objectives
Abstract	The inspection of safety-critical components in the nuclear power industry depends on procedures that can detect defects to a given threshold of severity; the acceptance process for this is known as inspection qualification. Inspection qualification in the UK is a highly developed formal activity, and is representative of the best practice in the world. However it can be very conservative if there is uncertainty in the expected measured response. A vital example is the scattering of ultrasound from the tips of rough cracks, such as thermal fatigue cracks or stress corrosion cracks. Ultrasound scattering from crack tips is widely exploited to measure crack sizes, but while the nature of the scattering is well understood for smooth cracks, scattering from the tips of rough cracks can differ significantly, and is not readily predictable. Consequently the qualification of ultrasound inspections for rough cracks has to be subject to severely conservative assumptions, and even so there remains a risk of misinterpreting findings.This project aims to bring understanding to the nature of the scattering, and to develop predictive modelling tools, such that these conservative assumptions can be safely eroded and the reliability of inspections improved. This will enable industry to reduce the costs of manufacturing and repairing, and down-time from outages, as well as improving confidence in the safe operation of safety-critical plant. The project will build on a strong UK heritage of the knowledge of ultrasound scattering, including recent work by the proposers on the stochastic nature of wave reflections from rough surfaces. The key aim is to deliver a new analytical approach that will predict the statistically expected scattering from the tips of cracks of given characteristics of roughness. The work will also include experimental investigation of real cracks and numerical modelling studies. The new ideas will be applied to the primary ultrasound inspection techniques of Time-of-Flight-Diffraction, Pulse-Echo, and array imaging. The work will be undertaken as a collaboration between researchers in Mechanical Engineering and in Mathematics at Imperial College. The proposal is being submitted within the UK Research Centre in NDE (RCNDE) to its targeted research programme. The proposal has been reviewed internally by the RCNDE, approved by the RCNDE board, and supported financially by five RCNDE industrial members
Publications	(none)
Final Report	(none)
Added to Database	14/02/19