Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

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A comparative evaluation of ultrasonic testing of AISI 316L welds made by

shielded metal arc welding and gas tungsten arc welding processes
S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar ∗
NDE Lab., Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, P.O. Box 19395-1999, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds prepared by two different welding processes is studied in this
Received 29 August 2009 paper. The two welding processes considered are shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) and gas tung-
Received in revised form 15 February 2010 sten arc welding (GTAW) and the ultrasonic testing technique used is time-of-flight diffraction (ToFD).
Accepted 16 February 2010
Identical artificial flaws were implanted in both welds during the welding process. Austenitic character-
istics consisting of grain orientation distribution and anisotropy show that the GTAW specimen is more
isotropic than the SMAW due to the orientation of its grains. Moreover, comparison of echo amplitudes
PACS:
shows higher attenuation for the weld prepared by the GTAW process. The specimens were examined
81.05.Bx
81.20.Vj
by the ultrasonic ToFD technique under identical conditions. B-scan images obtained from ToFD mea-
81.70.v surements of the two welds indicate that inspection of the specimen prepared by the SMAW process
06.60.Mr is easier than the one made by the GTAW process due to higher scattering of waves in the latter. The
43.35.Zc measurements also showed that the probe positioning is very important in the detection of diffracted
81.05.t echoes when using the ToFD technique.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Ultrasonic testing
Time-of-flight diffraction
Austenitic weld structure
SMAW
GTAW

1. Introduction Experimental analysis on mockups is also considered by some

Desirable properties of austenitic stainless steels such as high
resistance to corrosion, resistance to creep at high temperatures,
and good weldability has lead to numerous industrial applications
of these materials. Oil, gas, petrochemical, and nuclear industry
employ these materials in many of their equipment. The corro-
sion resistance of austenitic steels also makes them of interest to
the manufactures of food industry. For quality and safety reasons,
austenitic welds need to be inspected by nondestructive testing
(NDT) techniques. Ultrasonic testing is one of the efficient NDT
techniques used for this purpose.
There are numerous investigations on the inspection of
austenitic welds using ultrasonic testing; however, there are lit-
tle data on the evaluation of ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds
prepared by different welding processes. Most investigations con-
sider the SMAW process (Chassignole et al., 2005) and some are
based on the development of modeling codes taking into account
the characteristics of the austenitic welds (Liu and Wirdelius, 2007).
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 912 148 7903; fax: +98 21 8867 4748.
E-mail address: honarvar@kntu.ac.ir (F. Honarvar).
researchers (Martinez-ońa et al., 2006).
In austenitic welds, grains are solidified in a columnar and
dendritic structure. Columnar grains as well as anisotropic and
heterogeneous structure of austenitic welds make their ultrasonic
testing difficult (Chassignole et al., 2000a,b). This is due to beam
skewing, beam splitting, wave attenuation, grain scattering, and
other adverse effects caused by the material structure (Apfel et al.,
2005; Chassignole et al., 2007). These ultrasonic disturbances along
with the appearance of spurious echoes caused by mode conver-
sion may render the detection and characterization of the flaws
in the ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds very difficult or even
impossible (Chassignole et al., 2009).
The structure of a weld is controlled by the welding process
and its parameters. The structure of austenitic welds made by dif-
ferent welding processes can be significantly different (Hudgell et
al., 1989; Handbook, 1986). Moreover, position of the weld may
alter the structure or in other words grain orientation of austenitic
welds (Chassignole et al., 2000a,b). The ultrasonic test results could
vary based on the welding process. Analysis of ultrasonic testing
using through-transmission technique on submerged arc welding
and SMAW processes have revealed significant beam splitting and
ultrasonic beam deviations (Chassignole et al., 2005; Chassignole

0924-0136/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2010.02.013
1044 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050
Fig. 1. Weld joint configuration (dimensions are in mm).
et al., 2009). The magnitude and direction of these effects may alter
depending on the welding process used.
There are two methods for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) of ultrasonic signals obtained from ultrasonic testing of
austenitic welds (Ermolov, 1989). They are:
(1) Selection of optimal test parameters such as wave mode, fre-
quency, probe angle, and probe position.
(2) Signal processing of low SNR signals.
The relatively new ultrasonic time-of-flight diffraction (ToFD)
technique has already been used for inspection of austenitic
welds (Charlesworth and Temple, 2001; Martinez-ońa et al., 2006;
Subbaratnam et al., 2008). ToFD uses two longitudinal angle beam
probes in pitch-catch mode. The frequencies used are generally
higher than conventional ultrasonic probes and the results are pre-
sented as either A- or B-scan output. For a planar defect lying inside
the material, four indications could be identified; they are the lat-
eral wave, diffracted echo from top of flaw, diffracted echo from
bottom of flaw, and the backwall echo. One interesting point in
this technique is that there are phase differences in the echoes
received from top and bottom of a flaw. Moreover, the lateral wave
and backwall echo also have opposite phases. Therefore, based on
the phase of an indication, it can be determined whether it has orig-
inated from the top or bottom of a flaw (Charlesworth and Temple,
2001). Some of the advantages of ToFD over conventional ultrasonic
testing are:
(1) The entire body of the weld can be quickly scanned in one pass.
(2) Size of discontinuities can be measured with higher accuracy
compared to conventional ultrasonic testing.
Longitudinal angle wave used in ToFD technique is the proper
wave mode for inspection of thick austenitic welds. It has been
noted that the beam skewing and attenuation of vertically polarized
shear waves (SV) are higher than longitudinal waves (Neumann,
1989). Therefore, the ToFD technique which uses longitudinal
waves seems to be a suitable choice for inspecting anisotropic
materials such as austenitic welds.
In this paper, the ultrasonic ToFD testing of austenitic welds
made by two different welding processes is investigated. Two
flawed welded specimens are prepared by SMAW and GTAW
welding processes. The base material, geometry of the bevel, and
implanted artificial defects are identical for the two specimens.
The welds will first be examined for their weld structure includ-
ing degree of anisotropy and grain orientation distribution and
then tested by ultrasonic ToFD technique to study the effect of the
welding process on ToFD measurements.
Table 1
Chemical composition of base metal and electrodes (wt.%).
Metal type C Cr Ni Mo Mn
Base metal 0.03 15.7 11.1 2.27 1.35
ER316L <0.03 19 12.5 2.5 1.75
E316L-16 0.025 18.5 12 2.7 0.8
Fig. 2. Details of machined artificial defects (dimensions are in mm).
2. Experiments
AISI 316L wrought austenitic steel which is used in a wide range
of industrial applications was chosen as the base material in this
study. Two welded plate specimens were prepared by SMAW (also
known as MMA) and GTAW welding processes (also known as TIG).
The flat position was selected in welding both specimens. As shown
in Fig. 1, the thickness of base material, root face, and root gap were
25, 2, and 2 mm, respectively. In the case of SMAW sample, the
root pass was done by GTAW, and the remaining passes by SMAW
process. The diameters of the electrodes were 3 mm in first layer
and 4 mm in other layers. The polarity of direct current electrode
positive (DCEP) and direct current electrode negative (DCEN) were
used for SMAW and GTAW processes, respectively.
Gas tungsten arc welding uses a non-consumable tungsten elec-
trode, an inert gas for arc shielding, and a filler metal. In this study,
Argon was used as the shielding gas and filler metal was ER316L.
Chemical compositions of the base metal and electrodes affect the
weld microstructure. Table 1 gives chemical composition of the
electrode used in the SMAW process as well as the composition
of the filler metal in the GTAW process. The weight percentage of
elements in the electrode and filler metal are approximately the
same. Both electrode and filler metal were selected according to
AWS standards. During the welding, the inter-pass temperature
was maintained at approximately 100 ◦ C for both welds.
An artificial flaw was machined by electro-discharge machin-
ing (EDM) process in each weld. The depths of each of these flaws
were approximately 6 mm from the top surface of the base mate-
rial. With a height of 3 mm, width of 0.5 mm, and length of 26 mm,
this notch represents a mid-wall lack-of-fusion. The molten weld
pool of austenitic stainless steel tends to be more viscose than
ferritic and martensitic stainless steels. This prevents the metal
flow in these materials and may initiate lack-of-fusion defects. The
implanted defects had identical dimensions and depths in both
specimens. The specifications of implanted defects are shown in
Fig. 2. After machining the defects in each weld, the welding pro-
cess was continued up to the crown. Welding parameters in both
processes are given in Table 2. The parameters show that GTAW
has lower efficiency than SMAW due to its higher heat input.
After welding, X-ray radiography was performed on both spec-
imens to characterize the artificial flaws and to ensure the absence
of additional flaws, see Fig. 3. The sensitivities of inspection were
calculated as 1.6%.
After inspecting the samples by radiographic testing, ultrasonic
Si time-of-fight diffraction measurements were carried out on both
0.28 specimens. The inspection was done parallel to the centerline of
0.47 the welds by two 65◦ , 6 MHz longitudinal angle beam probes in
0.9
pitch-catch configuration. The probe center separation was 65 mm.
 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050
Table 2
Parameters of welding processes.
Welding process Electrode type Electrode diameter (mm)
GTAW ER316L 2.4
SMAW E316L-16 3 and 4
To study the anisotropy of the base and weld materials, samples
with dimensions of 15 mm × 15 mm × 15 mm were cut from the
base metal and welded sections. Ultrasonic wave velocities were
measured at various directions along principal and non-principal
axes (45◦ with respect to principal axes). The measurements were
conducted by both contact and immersion techniques. Contact
measurements for determination of longitudinal wave velocities
were carried out by a 4 MHz probe and for determination of shear
wave velocities by a 2.25 MHz probe. The frequency used in immer-
sion measurements was 1 MHz.
To study the grain orientation of welds, samples with dimen-
sions of 40 mm × 25 mm × 5 mm were cut from the welded part of
the specimens. These samples were subsequently ground, electro-
polished, and etched. To expose the grain orientation of welds, an
etching solution made from 1.5 g ammonium persulphate, 7.5 ml
H2 O, 25 g iron perchloride, 10 ml HCl, and 3 ml HNO3 was used.
3. Characterization of austenitic welds
According to Chassignole et al. (2000a,b), characterization of
austenitic welds structure includes the following two factors:
degree of anisotropy and grain orientation distribution. The metal-
lographic images obtained from SMAW and GTAW welds clearly
reveal their columnar grain structure and the grains growth
direction which is perpendicular to the weld preparation surface
(chamfer). As shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), there are noticeable differ-
ences between the grain orientation and extent of epitaxial growth
of the two welds. Schematic diagram of grain orientation for the
two welds is shown in Fig. 4(c) and (d).
In SMAW process, which has shallow penetration, the grains are
slightly tilted with respect to the central vertical line of the weld
and columnar grains extend through many layers. In GTAW pro-
cess, which has deep penetration, a more complex grain structure
is observed. The grains show an inverted V formation in each pass
which could be interpreted as grain growth towards the center of
each pass. This coincides with the direction of temperature gradi-
ent. Epitaxial growth is only possible for a few suitably orientated
grains and to some extent depends on the position of weld beads.
When a weld bead lay directly on top of a substrate bead, the grains
are more likely to allow epitaxial growth.
In general, the grain growth is controlled by the following fac-
tors: epitaxial growth, temperature gradient, the selective growth,
and solid grain at the solid–liquid interface. If solid grains at the
solid–liquid interface are close to the direction of temperature gra-
Fig. 3. Radiogarphic image of the weld prepared by the GTAW process.
1045
Voltage (V) Current (A) Welding speed (mm/s) Heat input (kJ/mm)
15 200 1.25 2.4
27 150 3.6 1.2
dient, it results in a slow turn towards the temperature gradient
and consequently further epitaxial growth takes place. On the other
hand, when solid grains at the solid–liquid interface are very far
from the direction of temperature gradient, the grain growth is
more selective (Moysan et al., 2003). These phenomena are affected
by the rate of solidification. Moreover, the rate of solidification is
affected by the shape of the metal pool. This shape can ultimately
influence the solid–liquid interface position during the solidifica-
tion and cooling stages. The weld pool shape caused by variations
of welding parameters plays an important role in the solidified
microstructure of a weld (Davies and Garland, 1975; David et al.,
2003).
Different variables including heat input, heat distribution, weld-
ing speed, order and number of passes, position of passes, and
inclined angle of electrode may affect the change of the weld pool
shape. Besides these factors, in the GTAW process, the type of gas
shielding and the arc length also influence the geometry of the weld
pool (Jou, 2003; Lu et al., 2009). Jou (2003) showed that the effect
of heat distribution is significant on both the shape and the size of
the weld pool in the GTAW process.
Higher energy density, higher heat input, and lower welding
speed of GTAW compared to SMAW produces a weld pool of dif-
ferent geometry. This may cause variations in the grain orientation
and lead to more selective growth directions. Furthermore, in the
GTAW process, grains tend towards the direction of temperature
gradient very rapidly. In contrast, in SMAW process, grains tend to
grow in the epitaxial direction.
Degree of anisotropy of a material plays an important role in its
ultrasonic testing. Anisotropy may cause variations in the atten-
uation of ultrasonic waves by beam skewing. The angle of skew
depends on the elastic constants of the material, beam to grain
angle, and wave mode (Neumann, 1989). Austenitic weld is usually
considered to be orthotropic (Moysan et al., 2003).
Elastic constants can be measured by sending elastic waves into
the material (Mouchtachi et al., 2004; Wu and Ho, 1990; Dewey et
al., 1977). Elastic properties of anisotropic materials can be deter-
mined according to Christoffel equation as follows (Rose, 2004):
|im − 2 ıim | = 0 (1)
where ,  and im are the mass density, velocity, and Christof-
fel acoustic tensor, respectively. The Christoffel acoustic tensor is
defined as
im = Ciklm nk nl (2)
where Ciklm is the fourth-order stiffness tensor of the mate-
rial and nk , nl are direction cosines of the normal to the wave
front.
The stiffness tensor of the material can be obtained by mea-
suring the ultrasonic wave velocities in different directions. The
density of the material is also required for calculating the elastic
constants. The densities of the base metal and two weld samples
Table 3
Measured densities of base and weld metals.
Metal type Density (kg/m3 )
Base metal 7968
SMAW weld metal 7745
GTAW weld metal 8021
1046 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050

Fig. 4. Macrograph of sectional plane of: (a) SMAW and (b) GTAW welds. Schematic plot of grain orientation in (c) SMAW and (d) GTAW welds.

were determined by means of Archimedes’ principle. The measured equal to 1, the anisotropy of the base metal is not very significant.
densities are listed in Table 3. Moreover, from the stiffness matrix of the base metal, it can be
The wave velocities are measured on samples cut from each observed that the anisotropy of this material is approximately cubic
material. The wave velocities in different directions in each mate- because C11 = C22 = C33 , C12 ∼= C13 ∼= C23 , and C44 ∼
= C55 ∼
= C66 .
rial are given in Table 4. Maximum error in the measurement of According to Kupperman and Reimann (1980), the beam skew-
densities and velocities are estimated as 2% and 0.5%, respectively. ing observed in anisotropic materials, including austenitic welds, is
The stiffness matrices of the base and weld metals were con- due to the difference in the directions of phase and group velocities
structed based on the measured parameters as follows: of ultrasonic waves in these materials. It means that the wave fronts
are not perpendicular to the beam axes anymore; consequently the
⎡ 265.5 121.8 110.2 0 0 0
⎤ beam skewing is a function of beam to grain angle in each mode.
121.8 265.5 112.9 0 0 0
⎢ 110.2 ⎥ Fig. 5 shows the phase velocity and beam skewing for the base,
Base metal : ⎢ 112.9 265.5 0 0 0 ⎥ GPa (3) SMAW, and GTAW materials in the xz plane. Beam skewing is
⎣0 0 0 79.5 0 0 ⎦
0 0 0 0 76.5 0 the angle between phase velocity and group velocity (Rose, 2004).
0 0 0 0 0 77.9 Directions of coordinate axes are designated in Fig. 1. Fig. 5(c) shows
that the longitudinal wave velocity for SMAW weld material varies
⎡ 258.5 178.7 131.8 0 0 0
⎤ from 5193 to 6285 m/s and the shear wave velocity varies from
181.7 225.1 164.2 0 0 0
3029 to 3765 m/s. The corresponding variations for longitudinal
⎢ 131.8 163.9 208.9 0 ⎥ and shear wave velocities in the GTAW weld material shown in
SMAW metal : ⎢ 0 0 ⎥ GPa (4)
⎣0 0 0 115.3 0 0 ⎦ Fig. 5(e) are 5552–6061 and 2939–3644 m/s, respectively. Fig. 5(d)
0 0 0 0 101.1 0 shows that the angle between the phase velocity vector and group
0 0 0 0 0 74.2
velocity vector (beam skewing) for longitudinal (L), vertically polar-
ized shear (SV), and horizontally polarized shear (SH) waves in
⎡ 278.6 173.7 148.1 0 0 0
⎤ SMAW weld material can be as much as 16.5◦ , 40.5◦ , and 12.6◦ ,
173.7 254.9 112.1 0 0 0 respectively. The corresponding values for the GTAW weld mate-
⎢ 148.1 112.1 247.2 0 ⎥
GTAW metal : ⎢ 0 0 ⎥ GPa (5) rial are 6.3◦ , 15.2◦ , and 6.2◦ , respectively see Fig. 5(f). Moreover,
⎣0 0 0 106.5 0 0 ⎦ the relatively low anisotropy factor of the 316L wrought stainless
0 0 0 0 73.9 0
0 0 0 0 0 74.3 steel, circular shape of its velocity curves, and its average grain size
of approximately 25 ␮m, indicate that this material can be consid-
For anisotropic materials, the anisotropic factor, A, is defined as ered to be isotropic from an ultrasonic testing point of view, see
(Rose, 2004): Fig. 5(a) and (b).
In Fig. 6, the amplitudes of the backwall echoes in weld samples
2C44
A= (6) are compared with the backwall echo of the base metal along princi-
C11 − C12 pal directions. It can be observed that the amplitude of the backwall
For the stiffness matrices obtained for the base, SMAW, and GTAW echo in the SMAW sample is higher than the GTAW sample in all
materials, the anisotropic factor was found to be 1.1, 2.9, and 2.0, principal directions. Moreover, Fig. 7 shows multiple echoes orig-
respectively. Since for isotropic materials, the anisotropic factor is inating from backwall of samples in the direction of non-principal
 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050 1047

Fig. 5. (a) Phase velocity in base metal, (b) beam skewing in base metal, (c) phase velocity in SMAW weld material, (d) beam skewing in SMAW weld material, (e) phase
velocity in GTAW weld material and (f) beam skewing in GTAW weld material.

axes (45◦ with respect to x and z axes). In the x and y directions,
the amplitudes of the two weld samples are close while this dif-
ference is more severe in the z direction and non-principal axes.
Higher reduction of echo amplitudes in the GTAW sample could be
attributed to its complex grain orientation distribution. Moreover,
for both welds, echo amplitudes in the z direction and non-principal
directions are larger than the other two principal directions. This
difference is more significant in the SMAW weld sample.
According to Temple (1988), in anisotropic materials, variations
of echo amplitude and attenuation are not only because of the beam
skewing effects but also because of the reflection and scattering at
grain boundaries. Apparently, this may change if different welding
processes are used for making the weld. Moreover, beam scattering
depends on anisotropy, grain size, and frequency or on the other
hand ratio of grain size to wavelength, beam to grain angle, wave
mode, and material properties (Ploix et al., 2006). Since the attenu-
ation of signals and beam skewing in the GTAW sample is less than
the SMAW sample, we can say that the beam scattering is more
severe in GTAW compared to SMAW.
4. Ultrasonic time-of-flight diffraction (ToFD) testing
Fig. 8(a) shows the B-scan images obtained by ToFD testing of the
SMAW weld sample. In this image, a clear indication of the defect
1048 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050

Fig. 9. Schematic of probes movement.

The modeling of wave propagation by ray tracing in conven-

Fig. 6. Signal amplitudes measured along principal axes.
can be observed. The B-scan image of the GTAW weld sample was
also obtained using identical test parameter settings. However, in
this B-scan image the defect could not be easily identified. Increas-
ing the gain setting of the ultrasonic instrument by 5 dB produced a
better B-scan image in which the implanted defect could be identi-
fied, see Fig. 8(b). Although the existence of flaws can be identified
in Fig. 8(a) and (b), their through wall lengths cannot be easily mea-
sured because the diffractions from top and bottom of flaws cannot
be identified.
tional ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds shows that the wave
path depends on a number of parameters including the wave mode,
angle, and positions of defect and probes (Liu and Wirdelius, 2007;
Schmitz et al., 2000; Ogilvy, 1992). Moreover, according to Schmitz
et al. (1999), the probe position can affect the reception of the
reflected echo. In other words, the anisotropic nature of austenitic
welds leads to unpredictable wave propagation paths that may alter
the arrival point of the returned echo.
To investigate the effect of reduction of probe center separa-
tion (PCS), this parameter was reduced from 65 mm to 55 mm
as shown in Fig. 9. Fig. 10 shows the B-scan images obtained
for PCS = 55 mm. In Fig. 10, tip diffracted echoes from both top
and bottom of defects in the two welds can be identified. To
ensure that these echoes are diffracted echoes, representative A-

Fig. 7. Comparison of signals amplitude at non-principal axes (45◦ with respect to x and z axes): (a) SMAW and (b) GTAW.

Fig. 8. B-scan images of the two welds: (a) SMAW sample and (b) GTAW sample with additional gain.
 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050 1049

Fig. 10. B-scan images of the two welds for PCS of 55 mm (a) SMAW weld sample and (b) GTAW weld sample.

Fig. 11. A-scan signals at 65 mm probe center separation: (a) raw signal obtained from SMAW weld sample, (b) raw data obtained from GTAW weld sample, (c) A-scan signal
shown in (a) after processing and (d) A-scan signal shown in (b) after processing.

scan signals were taken from the defect location were examined.
Due to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of these A-scan signals,
they were first subjected to special signal processing techniques.
These signal processing techniques include deconvolution by
Wiener filtering followed by autoregressive spectral extrapolation
(Honarvar et al., 2004).
Figs. 11 and 12 show the raw and processed A-scan signals
obtained from the two weld samples for PCS of 65 and 55 mm,
respectively. In Figs. 11 and 12, L, T, B, BW, and F refer to lateral
wave, echo from top of flaw, echo from bottom of flaw, back-
wall echo, and false call, respectively. The signal processing has
improved the SNR and time resolution of A-scan signals shown in

Fig. 12. A-scan signals at 55 mm probe center separation: (a) raw signal obtained from SMAW weld sample, (b) raw data obtained from GTAW weld sample and (c) A-scan
signal shown in (a) after processing and (d) A-scan signal shown in (b) after processing.
1050 S.M. Tabatabaeipour, F. Honarvar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 1043–1050

Table 4
Measured velocities of base and weld metals.

Polarization Base metal velocity (m/s) SMAW sample velocity (m/s) GTAW sample velocity (m/s)

Longitudinal wave mode

X X 5773 5777 5894
Y Y 5773 5396 5638
Z Z 5773 5193 5552
45◦ to X and Z 45◦ to X and Z 5760 6061 5905
45◦ to X and Y 45◦ to X and Y 5838 6079 6061
45◦ to Y and Z 45◦ to Y and Z 5807 6285 5993

Shear wave mode

X Z 3095 3453 3131
X Y 3127 3162 3099
Y Z 3160 3855 3644
Y X 3127 3029 2988
Z X 3101 3765 2939
Z Y 3166 3862 3644

Figs. 11 and 12. Moreover, Fig. 12 confirms the existence of two
diffracted echoes from flaw edges. Two false calls are also observed
in the A-scan signal obtained from the GTAW weld sample indicat-
ing higher level of wave scattering in GTAW structure compared
to SMAW structure due to grains orientation distribution. Based
on ToFD experiments, it can be concluded that the inspectability
of the GTAW weld sample is lower than the SMAW weld. Since
wave scattering depends on the ratio of grain size to wavelength,
use of lower frequency probes for inspection of GTAW welds is
recommended.
5. Conclusions
An experimental investigation was conducted on two austenitic
weld specimens made by two different welding processes, i.e.
gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) and shielded metal arc welding
(SMAW). Inspectability of these welds by ultrasonic time-of-flight
diffraction (ToFD) technique was investigated by studying their
grain structure and anisotropy. Results obtained show that GTAW
is more isotropic than SMAW sample. Moreover, it was shown
that wave attenuation in GTAW sample is higher than the SMAW.
Ultrasonic ToFD measurements were carried out on both samples.
B-scan images indicate that it is easier to detect flaws in the SMAW
sample compared to the GTAW sample. It was concluded that the
ultrasonic ToFD technique is more suitable for inspection of SMAW
welds compared to GTAW welds. By controlling the welding pro-
cess and its parameters during welding, different weld structures
could be obtained. the ultrasonic inspection is dependent on the
weld structure. Consequently, it can be recommended that more
attention should be paid to the topic of “design for inspectability”
when dealing with austenitic welds.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank AMA Industrial Company and
in particular Mr. E. Rahimi for assistance in making the weld
samples.
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