Hidden disbond detection in spent nuclear fuel storage systems using air-coupled ultrasonics

This paper studies an air-coupled ultrasonic scanning approach for damage assessment in steel-clad concrete structures. An air-coupled ultrasonic sender generates guided plate waves in the steel cladding and a small contact-type receiver measures the corresponding wave responses. A frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain signal filtering technique is used to isolate the behavior of the fundamental symmetric (S0) mode of the guided plate waves. The behavior of the S0 mode is sensitive to interface bonding conditions. The proposed inspection approach is verified by a series of experiments performed on laboratory-scale specimens. The experimental results demonstrate that hidden disbond between steel cladding and underlying concrete substrate can be successfully detected with the ultrasonic test setup and the f-k domain signal filtering technique.