The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Tiruchi, has installed a state-of-the-art non-destructive testing machine at its Seamless Steel Tube Plant (SSTP), a major producer of seamless steel tubes and pipes.
The new system inaugurated on Thursday by the Executive Director of BHEL, Tiruchi, A.V. Krishnan, consists of an automatic on-line Ultrasonic Testing machine with computerised technology to rule out internal defects in the entire volume of tubes manufactured by the SSTP.
Supplied by the Magnetic Analysis Corporation of the U.S., the machine, which can also measure dimensional accuracy of the tubes, consists of a Rotary ultrasonic head with 16 ultrasonic transducer probes, rotating at 1200 rpm (rotations per minute). The tubes can be tested at a speed of 60 m per minute.
Additionally, the machine has laser length measurement head, defect marking system, tube identification marking system, and eddy current testing head. It can test tubes of outer diameter from 20 mm to 160 mm with wall thickness ranging between two mm and 12 mm, and length from 3 m to 24 m.
The ultrasonic test head can scan for longitudinal and traverse, and lamination defects both on the external surface and within the volume of the tube of even 0.3 mm depth.
