Practical problems of data collection and interpretation for large scale automated ultrasonic inspections

The inspection techniques are nearly all automated ultrasonic inspections and are being performed using the MIPS/GUIDE inspection software systems developed by Nuclear Electric at the NDT Applications Centre in Manchester. This pre-service inspection is the most comprehensive automated inspection of any PWR constructed to date. This paper looks at the developments to the software that were required for the inspection and some of the problems that the inspection presented. MIPS and GUIDE are two complementary software packages for carrying out and analysing the data from automated ultrasonic inspections.