JPS6135354A - Ultrasonic signal processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform high-precision flaw detection by evaluating a defect of an object material and the position and size of a weld zone from the area of a received signal originating from a reflected echo. CONSTITUTION:A probe 1 outputs an ultrasonic wave with high-frequency pulses from a transmitting circuit 3. Then, a receiving circuit 4 receives the reflected echo from the defect of the object material and its received signal is inputted to an integration circuit 11 through a gate circuit 6 and converted into an area signal. Namely, the correlation between namely, the ratio (received signal area by reflected echo)/(received signal area by bottom surface cho) and an artificial defect whose ratio between the both is already known is utilized to grasp the shape of the defect including its size, inclination, etc.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an ultrasonic signal processing device that performs defect evaluation, quality evaluation, etc. from the area of an ultrasonic reception signal.

[Prior art]

Generally, in ultrasonic flaw detection equipment, welding rodets, etc., the reflected echo level of ultrasonic waves is converted into an electrical reception signal, and defects in the test material, welding position, etc. are evaluated from the peak value of this reception signal. It's showing.

In this way, as an ultrasonic signal processing device that can evaluate defects etc. from the peak value of the received signal, the conventional
The devices shown in FIGS. 4 to 4 are known.

In the drawing, 1 is a probe that outputs ultrasonic waves to a test material and receives the ultrasonic waves as the amount of reflected echoes from the test material,
As the probe 1, for example, a magnetostrictive vibrator made of a magnetic material and a coil, a piezoelectric vibrator such as a crystal vibrator, an electromagnetic ultrasonic vibrator made of a DC electromagnet and a coil, etc. are used.

2 is a signal processing device according to the prior art;
are transmitting circuit 3, receiving circuit 4, synchronizing circuit 5, dart circuit 6
, a display section 7, etc., the transmitting circuit 3 and the receiving circuit 4 are connected to the probe 1 via an input/output terminal 8, and the receiving circuit 4
f-) is connected to an external output terminal 9 via a circuit 6, and the external output terminal 9 is connected to, for example, a recording device (not shown) or the like that completely determines the presence or absence of defects from the peak value of the received signal.

Here, the transmitting circuit 3 is configured as a pulse generator that applies a high frequency pulse to the probe 1, and the probe 1 outputs an ultrasonic wave of a predetermined frequency by applying the high frequency pulse. is being done.

The receiving circuit 4 outputs a voltage signal proportional to the reflected echo level, such as a defect echo or a bottom echo received by the probe 1, as a received signal to the ff-) circuit 6 and the display unit 7. The receiving circuit 4 includes an amplifier circuit and the like as necessary. In addition, probe 1
When is an electromagnetic ultrasonic transducer, the receiving circuit 4 includes a receiving coil of the transducer.

Further, the synchronizing circuit 5 outputs a synchronizing signal to the transmitting circuit 3, the f-) circuit 6, and the display section 7 at predetermined intervals. Therefore, the transmitting circuit 3 uses the synchronizing signal from the synchronizing circuit 5 as a trigger to output high-frequency pulses, and the gate circuit 6 opens the dart for a predetermined time based on the synchronizing signal, and transmits the received signal from the receiving circuit 4 to the external output terminal. 9, and the display section 7 sets the zero point of the display position based on the synchronization signal. On the other hand, the date circuit 6 receives the synchronization signal from the synchronization circuit 5 as described above.
) Set the opening time, output the received signal to the external output terminal 9, and display the dirt opening time on the display section 7.

Further, the display section 7 is composed of, for example, a synchroscope, and displays the received signal from the receiving circuit 4 and the dart opening signal from the dart circuit 6 on its display tube, thereby enabling visual observation.

The conventional technology is configured as described above, but when the transmitting circuit 3 outputs a high frequency pulse to the probe 1 based on the synchronization signal from the synchronization circuit 5, the probe 1 emits ultrasonic waves to the specimen material. do. As a result, the reflected echo from the test material is received by the probe 1 again and input to the receiving circuit 4, which outputs a voltage signal corresponding to the reflected echo level.

On the other hand, since the synchronization circuit 5 causes the gate circuit 6 to open the dart for a predetermined time, the reception signal from the reception circuit 4 is outputted from the external output terminal 9 to the recording device via the dart circuit 6, and is also output to the display unit. 7 and displayed as a signal waveform. In this way, the size of the defect in the received signal output from the external output terminal 9 to the recording device is detected and evaluated based on its peak value.

That is, in FIG. 3, 10 is a material to be tested and 10A is a defect in the material to be tested 10, and ultrasonic waves are transmitted from the probe 1 to the nuclear test material 10 and reflected from the defect 10A. ) The received signal due to the received reflected echo is shown in FIG. Then, the peak value H of the received signal A and the peak value of the received signal due to the bottom surface echo reflected from the bottom surface of the test material 10 are read, and the ratio of the peak value due to the reflected echo/the peak value due to the bottom surface echo is determined in advance. The size of the defect 10A was evaluated by examining the correlation with a known artificial defect whose size is known and using it as a calibration curve.

This is widely used as an ultrasonic reflection method. For this reason, either visually observe the peak values of the received waveforms corresponding to the reflected echo and bottom echo displayed on the display unit 7, or
Inspection was performed by reading each peak value output from the external output terminal 9 to the recording device and recorded.

However, the prior art described above has the following drawbacks. That is, depending on the shape, inclination, etc. of the defect 10A, small peaks B, C, etc. may be superimposed on the received signal A. This is caused by defect 1, as shown in Figure 3.
On the plane perpendicular to the ultrasonic beam within 0A, the reflection angle is 0,
This is because, while the echo returns in the shortest possible time, the echo reflected from the portion where the surface of the defect 10A is inclined has a reflection angle corresponding to the angle of reflection, and the time for the echo to reach the probe 1 is delayed. Therefore, even with one defect 10A, peak values are observed at different positions on the time axis in the received signal A due to the reflected echo.

Thus, in the conventional technique, the size of the defect 10A was evaluated only from the peak value of the reflected echo;
As mentioned above, this peak value only uses a part of the reflected echo information returned from the defect 10A, and small peak values B, C, etc. have not been evaluated, and the shape of the defect 10A, There was a problem in that the evaluation did not take everything such as slope into account. On the other hand, the conventional technique has the drawback that the shape, slope, etc. of the defect 10A causes large variations in the actual measurement data used to determine the calibration curve, making it impossible to improve the correlation with artificial defects.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

The present invention was developed in view of the problems of the prior art described above, and is capable of highly accurate ultrasonic flaw detection by integrating the waveform of the received signal due to reflected echoes and evaluating the size of the defect from the area ratio. An object of the present invention is to provide an ultrasonic signal processing device that enables the acquisition of an ultrasonic signal processing device and the like.

[Means for solving problems]

In order to achieve the above object, the feature of the configuration adopted by the present invention is that an integrating circuit is provided at the next stage of the receiving circuit, and the integrating circuit outputs a signal tube corresponding to the area of the received signal. be.

〔Example〕

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to FIG. Note that the same components as those in the prior art described above are given the same reference numerals, and their explanations will be omitted.

However, 11 is the output side of the dart circuit 6 and the external output terminal 9.
The integrating circuit 11 converts the received signal (received signal A shown in FIG. 4) from the receiving circuit 4 outputted via the dart circuit 6 as an area signal proportional to the received signal (received signal A shown in FIG. 4). The present embodiment is configured as described above, but the operation will be described next. Now, test material 1
The dirt circuit 6 converts the received signal A into a received signal A proportional to the reflected echo level reflected from the defect 10A
There is no particular difference from the conventional technology in terms of output via the .

However, in this embodiment, the integration circuit 11 is provided on the output side of the dirt circuit 6, and the received signal A is converted into an area and outputted to the external output terminal 9 and the recording device. /Understand the defect shape including the size and inclination of the defect 10A by using the correlation between the ratio of the received signal area by the bottom echo and a known artificial defect whose ratio is known in advance. I can do it.

Thus, in the prior art, the received signal A as shown in FIG. 4 was detected only from its peak value H, so small peaks B, C, etc. were ignored as defect information, but in this embodiment, the Since small peaks B, C, etc. can also be included in the area and used as defect information, it is possible to evaluate the defect 10A with higher precision.

In the above-described embodiment, the signal processing device 2 is configured to include, in addition to the transmitting circuit 3 and the receiving circuit 4, a synchronizing circuit 5, a dart circuit 6, a display section 7, etc., but these can be changed as necessary. They should be combined as appropriate, and are not necessarily required.

Further, in the embodiment, the external output terminal 9 has been described as being provided with a recording device, but a flaw detection device may be provided with an arithmetic device using a microcomputer or the like and having an automatic defect determination function.

Furthermore, in the example, an ultrasonic flaw detection device that detects a defect 10A' in a test material 10 is used as an example, but the vertical 6 dB
) It goes without saying that this method can also be applied to weld detection devices using the lip method.

〔Effect of the invention〕

The present invention has been described in detail above, and since it is configured to evaluate the size of a defect in the material to be inspected, the position of a weld, etc. from the area of the received signal due to the reflected echo, the conventional maximum peak value is ignored. Even small peak values obtained can be utilized to the fullest in the form of area as part of the defect information, and the size of the defect can be evaluated with high precision.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a circuit diagram showing an embodiment according to the present invention, Figs. 2 to 4 are related to the prior art, Fig. 2 is a circuit diagram, and Fig. 3 is an ultrasonic wave between a probe and a defect. FIG. 4 is a waveform diagram showing a received signal due to a reflected echo of an ultrasonic wave. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Probe, 2... Signal processing device, 3... Transmission circuit, 4... Receiving circuit, 10... Test material, 10A.
...Defect, 11...Integrator circuit, A...Received signal.

Claims (1)

[Claims] a probe that outputs ultrasonic waves to a material to be inspected and receives the ultrasonic waves as reflected echoes from the material to be inspected; a transmitting circuit that outputs a signal to cause the probe to generate ultrasonic waves; In an ultrasonic signal processing device comprising a receiving circuit that outputs a received signal corresponding to a reflected echo received by a tentacle, an integrating circuit is provided at the next stage of the receiving circuit, and the integrating circuit outputs an area of the received signal. An ultrasonic signal processing device characterized in that it is configured to output a corresponding signal.