Abstract
All commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the United States contain concrete structures. These structures provide important foundation, support, shielding, and containment functions. Identification and management of aging and the degradation of concrete structures is fundamental to the proposed long-term operation of NPPs. Concrete structures in NPPs are often inaccessible and contain large volumes of massively thick concrete. While acoustic imaging using the synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) works adequately well for thin specimens of concrete such as concrete transportation structures, enhancements are needed for heavily reinforced, thick concrete. We argue that image reconstruction quality for acoustic imaging in thick concrete could be improved with Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction (MBIR) techniques. MBIR works by designing a probabilistic model for the measurements (forward model) and a probabilistic model for the object (prior model). Both models are used to formulate an objective function (cost function). The final step in MBIR is to optimize the cost function. Previously, we have demonstrated a first implementation of MBIR for an ultrasonic transducer array system. The original forward model has been upgraded to account for direct arrival signal. Updates to the forward model will be documented and the new algorithm will be assessed with synthetic and empirical samples.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 43rd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, Volume 36 |
Editors | Leonard J. Bond, Dale E. Chimenti |
Publisher | American Institute of Physics Inc. |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780735414747 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 16 2017 |
Event | 43rd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, QNDE 2016 - Atlanta, United States Duration: Jul 17 2016 → Jul 22 2016 |
Publication series
Name | AIP Conference Proceedings |
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Volume | 1806 |
ISSN (Print) | 0094-243X |
ISSN (Electronic) | 1551-7616 |
Conference
Conference | 43rd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, QNDE 2016 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Atlanta |
Period | 07/17/16 → 07/22/16 |
Funding
The work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's staff office of the Under Secretary for Science and Energy under the Subsurface Technology and Engineering Research, Development, and Demonstration (SubTER) Crosscut program, and the office of Nuclear Energy under the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program. The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of the U.S. Department of Energy.