Development of an on-line ultrasonic system to monitor flow-accelerated corrosion of piping in nuclear power plants

Designs of contemporary nuclear power plants (NPPs) are concentrated on improving plant life as well as safety. As the nuclear industry prepares for continued operation beyond the design lifetime of existing NPP, aging management through advanced monitoring is called for. Therefore, we suggested two approaches to develop the on-line piping monitoring system. Piping located in some position is reported to go through Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC). One is to monitor electrochemical parameters, ECP and pH, which can show occurrence of corrosion. The other is to monitor mechanical parameters, displacement and acceleration. These parameters are shown to change with thickness. Both measured parameters will be combined to quantify the amount of FAC of a target piping. In this paper, we report the progress of a multidisciplinary effort on monitoring of flow-induced vibration, which changes with reducing thickness. Vibration characteristics are measured using accelerometers, capacitive sensor and fiber optic sensors. To theoretically support the measurement, we analyzed the vibration mode change in a given thickness with the aid of finite element analysis assuming FAC phenomenon is represented only as thickness change. A high temperature flow loop has been developed to simulate the NPP secondary condition to show the applicability of new sensors. Ultrasonic transducer is introduced as validation purpose by directly measuring thickness. By this process, we identify performance and applicability of chosen sensors and also obtain base data for analyzing measured value in unknown conditions.