A Barkhausen Noise Testing System for CANDU Feeder Pipes

A Barkhausen noise (BN) testing system was developed for the non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of residual stresses in CANDU reactor feeder pipes. The system consists of a four-channel arbitrary waveform flux control system (FCS), and the spring-loaded tetrapole prototype (SL4P) BN probe. The combination of the FCS and SL4P was shown to provide repeatable BN measurements on feeder pipe samples, with variations in air gaps between the SL4P poles and the sample from 0.43 mm to 1.29 mm, and typical pickup coil coupling uncertainties for the total BN energy from ±2% to ±7%. Precision for elastic strain estimation in feeder pipes was found to be between ±7 MPa and ±9 MPa in tension, depending on the excitation field configuration, and negligible in compression. Modelling of the BN penetration depth as a function of the excitation field was used to estimate the BN penetration depth between 5 μm at 300 kHz to a maximum of 500 μm at 3 kHz. The modelling, engineering, and procedures developed for this BN testing system provide an improved basis for the future advancement of BN testing, and ferromagnetic NDE in general.

Department dc:contributor.department

Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• White, Steven Andrew

Advisors dc:contributor.supervisor

• Clapham, Lynann
• Krause, Thomas W.

• Barkhausen noise
• CANDU feeder pipes
• ferromagnetism
• magnetic flux
• anisotropy
• non-destructive evaluation
• residual stress

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1994

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:queensu.scholaris.ca:1974/1994