Method of simulating ultrasonic inspection of flaws

A method of simulating in real-time the ultrasonic inspection of flaws in electric utility generating station components such as piping where each flaw is represented by a position sensitive ultrasonic signal waveform having X, Y and skew angle components relative to an ultrasonic transducer, with skew angle being angular rotation of the transducer about a Z axis orthogonal to the X and Y axes, and where the user moves a position encoder over a simulation test block, the position encoder simulating the movement of an ultrasonic transducer over a real or test piece with flaws, the encoder providing the X, Y and skew position components related to a specific waveform, said method comprising the following steps:

• storing on a plurality of rotational multi-disk data storage media said X Y and skew angle related waveform data, each skew angle being located on a respective side of one disk of said rotational storage media, with the X axis location relating to the tracks of the disk and the Y axis location relating to the sectors of the disk;
• sensing the movement of said position encoder head and reading encoded X, Y, and skew data and reading waveforms associated with such specific X, Y and skew data from said rotational memory and displaying to said user.