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AssigneeWestinghouse Electric Corp.
InventorsQui V. Le, William K. Cullen, Craig Bowser
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The systems and methods of the invention pertain to analyzing steam generator tube data for the detection of wear. Further, the invention is capable of performing a comparison of current tube signal data to baseline or historic tube signal data, e.g., from previous and/or the first, in-service inspection of the steam generator. The systems and methods are automated and can generate results to show potential tube-to-tube contact wear areas as well as the progression of tube-to-tube gap reduction within a steam generator tube bundle. In certain embodiments, the invention is capable of comparing current and historical eddy current data to determine the difference that may be related to degradation or other interested phenomena, and of processing and trending historical comparison results to establish normal variance and detect abnormal variances.
A method of employing at least one eddy current sensor and at least one digital computing device to non-destructively assess a current condition of a number of tubes of a steam generator of a nuclear power plant, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.