ULTRASONIC TESTING: A GUIDE

Ultrasonic testing is done in materials to determine whether there are flaws or defects present in a material, and also to determine the thickness of a material. 

Ultrasonic testing methods use sound waves to find defects and measure thickness. 

Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is also often called Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement (UTM), Ultrasonic Thickness Testing (UTT), or Sonic Testing (ST). It is most commonly used on metal, because metal conducts sound waves in a manner that supports this kind of measurement.

This method is commonly used by inspectors as one of many Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) testing methods, allowing them to collect information about the condition of an asset without having to damage it.

To get more specific, ultrasonic testing is done in materials to determine the presence of defects by measuring their thickness using high-frequency sound waves (typically 500kHz-20Mhz).

In ultrasonic testing, an inspector will use a probe or some other kind of transducer to send sound waves through the material they want to test. If there are no defects in the material, the sound waves will pass through it, but if the sound waves hit a defect they will bounce off of it, indicating its presence.

Inspectors can use the signal from the sound waves to create a 3-dimensional visualization of the material and determine the distances between different defects found within it.

Here are the primary benefits of using ultrasonic thickness measurements in inspections:

• Results are immediate
• It doesn’t require very much preparation
• It can detect defects both on the surface and beneath the surface of a material
• It can be done on a single side of a material (i.e., it can be performed even if you can’t access the other side of the material)
• It can be automated
• Testing results can be shared fairly simply

uses pulses of high-frequency sound energy to detect surface and subsurface cracks and other defects