The Evaluation of Thin Pressure Vessel′s Internal Defects by Laser Shearography

레이저 전단 간섭계를 이용한 압력용기의 내부 결함 평가

Internal defects of thin pressure vessel used in the power plants or the chemical plants may be created and grow due to corrosion or creep fatigue to reduce the strength and cause critical failure during operation. Therefore it is very important to detect this defect at the early stage. For this purpose, non-destructive, non-contact and highly sensitive method should be considered for on-line application. In this paper, a laser shearographic interferometer is applied to inspect circular defects and notch defects existed inside of thin pressure vessel under the presence of pressure up to 3 times of atmospheric pressure. The influences of the defect shape and size as well as the internal pressure to the characteristic pattern in the shearography fringe are investigated, and the quantitative evaluation of the defect size is tried. Also the experimental results are compared with the destructive test results to show the applicability of this method to the quantitative evaluation of internal defects in the thin pressure vessel.