ENC: Differences between full wave, negative, positive, RF.

Assunto: ENC: Differences between full wave, nega ve, posi ve, RF.
De: Marcelo Rodrigues Afonso <marcelo.afonso@usiminasmecanica.com.br>
Data: 06/11/2017 13:35
Para: "'marceloafo@yahoo.com.br'" <marceloafo@yahoo.com.br>

De: Ed Ginzel [mailto:eginzel@mri.on.ca]

Enviada em: segunda-feira, 6 de novembro de 2017 13:05
Para: Marcelo Rodrigues Afonso
Assunto: RE: Differences between full wave, negative, positive, RF.

Marcelo
Nice to hear from you. I see you are working for Usiminas. I was in one of the Usaminas facili es many years ago (I think it was in Ipa nga) providing an introduc on to TOFD to a small group. I
was there with Luis Marka when he was with NDT do Brasil.

As you noted, un-rec fied RF signals are always the version of display we use for TOFD.
When I was working in a research lab, we also used that display for some of the pulse-echo work when doing thickness tests in immersion because we can iden fy the correct me to use for
thickness measurements from the phase change going from water to metal and then phase-change from metal to water interface. The electronic gates could be arranged to trigger on the
posi ve or nega ve signals and this made our thickness measurements much more accurate (we were trying to assess wall loss +/-10 micron).

The use of full-wave rec fied signals seems to have become popular when ultrasonic inspec ons were used to detect defects. Since the defect is usually accepted or rejected based on its
amplitude rela ve to a standard, the absolute amplitude is the parameter we are forced to measure. Depending on how the beam interacts with the defect, some mes the nega ve part of the
signal is larger and some mes the posi ve is larger.

E.g. the first pulse has the posi ve part with a higher amplitude and the second pulse has the nega ve with a higher amplitude.

Trying to measure absolute amplitude is not straight forward for an ultrasonic technician that just wants the maximum posi ve OR nega ve value.

The process of rec fica on is easy to understand with a sine wave.

When the posi ve and nega ve values are equal, a diode can simply stop one side from passing and allow only posi ve or nega ve.

But as I noted above, some mes (usually) the signals are not equal posi ve and nega ve in ultrasonic tes ng.
If we only look at the posi ve or only look at the nega ve, we might not be ge ng the absolute maximum amplitude.

When using an amplitude criteria for accep ng or rejec ng indica ons it is therefore be er to use a full wave rec fied signal to ensure that we read the maximum amplitude.
Some mes it is also helpful to smooth the many peaks that form when using full wave rec fica on:
E.g.

Sorry for my long explana ons…I have a bad reputa on for long explana ons L

Now back to your ques on…why do we use rec fied signals in UT?
First, I would think it is to ensure we read the maximum response (as I explained above).
But also, it is much more convenient for the way we deal with codes and data displays.
We can easily draw a DAC curve when we have the rec fied signals to deal with.
Most of our evalua ons in regular pulse-echo do not require “phase” informa on that is obtained from the un-rec fied signal.
In data displays such as B-scans and C-scans, we usually assign a colour to amplitudes.
In Civa modelling I can display the signals as RF, Full wave rec fied or Full wave rec fied and smoothed.
You can (below) see that there is not much difference in the RF and rec fied display on the B-scan because the absolute amplitudes are preserved.
If I was to eliminate the nega ve parts of the signal (posi ve rec fica on) the rec fied display would have bands of zero voltage that would make the signal look odd.
When we smooth the signal it is much easier to understand that the amplitude rises to a peak and then drops off again.

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When we are using colours to sort good areas from bad, the use of a TCG with full rec fied signals and smoothing makes the interpreta on for the UT operator much easier.

So it depends on the applica on if we should use RF or rec fied signals. I cannot think of a good example where just posi ve or just nega ve rec fica on would be used in an ultrasonic test. For
weld inspec ons, my preference would be for full wave rec fica on with some smoothing (too much smoo ng and you have difficulty seeing the subtle changes that we use for echo-dynamic
characterisa on of indica ons.

Salud
Ed

From: Marcelo Rodrigues Afonso [mailto:marcelo.afonso@usiminasmecanica.com.br]

Sent: November-06-17 6:33 AM
To: 'Ed Ginzel'
Subject: Differences between full wave, negative, positive, RF.

Hi Mr Ed!

I know you are a legendary researcher regarding ultrasonic and non destructive testing and I sure you may help me our indicate a article that can clarify about the
practical use the wave modes in ultrasonics. I mean full wave, negative wave, positive wave and RF.

I know that for ToFD is better to use RF since this way we are able to determine the top and bottom tip of a defect.

In conventional UT for weld inspection we normally use full wave. But I really don’t know why.

These days I have seen a setup using negative wave for corrosion mapping with dual phased array probe.

Could you say same thing about the differences uses between these wave modes?

regards

Marcelo

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