OPTIMIZED DESIGN PARAMETERS OF EDDY CURRENT BOBBIN PROBE FOR STEAM GENERATOR TUBE IN NPPS

The bobbin probe is now widely accepted as a basic and important ECT technique among various ECT techniques for steam generator tube integrity assessment that is practiced during each plant outage. The bobbin probe is also one of the essential components which consist of the whole ECT examination system, and provides us with decisive data for the evaluation of tube integrity in accordance with acceptance criteria described in specific procedures. Accordingly, the design of ECT probe is especially important to examination results because the quality of acquired ECT data is determined by the optimized probe design characteristics, such as coil geometry, electrical properties, operation frequency, and so on. In this study, the relationship between electric characteristic changes and differential coil gap variation for the optimization of the ECT probe signal was investigated. As a result, for the examination of volumetric flaws fabricated on the O.D. side of ASME type calibration standard, we propose that the best Lissajous signal for the examination will be obtained when the coil gap of differential bobbin probe is approximately 1.2 ~ 1.6 mm .