Systems, methods and apparatus for acousto-ultrasonic assessment of metallurgical vessels

A method for inspecting a metallurgical vessel wall, the method comprising:

• a. receiving a plurality of time domain signals from one or more sensors, each of the plurality of time domain signals generated by a reflected stress wave induced by an impactor impacting the metallurgical vessel wall at an impact point, wherein each of the plurality of signals is received at a location at a predetermined distance from the impact point;
• b. converting the plurality of time domain signals into a plurality of frequency domain signals;
• c. identifying peaks in each of the plurality of frequency domain signals;
• d. generating a combined frequency domain signal based on the plurality of frequency domain signals by cancelling out any peak from one of the plurality of frequency domain signals not having a corresponding peak in at least one other of the plurality of frequency domain signals;
• and
• e. determining at least one of a thickness of the metallurgical vessel wall or an estimated location of a defect in the metallurgical vessel wall based on the combined frequency domain signal,
• the method further comprising utilizing a k-means clustering machine learning algorithm to identify one or more clusters of corresponding peaks in the plurality of frequency domain signals and, for each cluster of corresponding peaks:
• determining a prominence metric comprising a sum of prominences of the peaks in the cluster;
• determining a variance metric comprising a sum of absolute values of frequency difference for each peak in the cluster from a center frequency of the cluster;
• and,
• determining a ratio of the prominence metric to the variance metric,
• wherein the ratio of the prominence metric to the variance metric is used to determine a confidence score for a thickness determined based on that cluster of corresponding peaks.

An apparatus for inspecting a metallurgical vessel wall, the apparatus comprising:

• one or more sensors configured to detect reflected stress waves in a metallurgical vessel wall and generate a plurality of time domain signals, each of the plurality of time domain signals generated by a reflected stress wave induced by an impactor impacting the metallurgical vessel wall at an impact point, wherein each of the plurality of signals is received at a location at the same predetermined distance from the impact point;
• and
• processing electronics configured to:
• receive the plurality of time domain signals from the one or more of sensors;
• convert the plurality of time domain signals into a plurality of frequency domain signals;
• identify frequency peaks in each of the plurality of frequency domain signals;
• generate a combined frequency domain signal based on the frequency domain signals by cancelling out any peak from one of the plurality of frequency domain signals not having a corresponding peak in at least one other of the plurality of frequency domain signals;
• and
• determine at least one of a thickness of the metallurgical vessel wall or an estimated location of a defect in the metallurgical vessel wall based on the combined frequency domain signal.