Tiruchirappalli: Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited has comissioned a new non-destructive testing system in the Cold Mill area of Seamless Steel Tube Plant (SSTP) in Tiruchirappalli. This was inaugurated by A V Krishnan, Executive Director, BHEL on Thursday.

The Seamless Steel Tube Plant is a major producer of seamless steel tubes and pipes, which are critical and major components of Steam generators for Thermal Power plants. The new system will be used for testing all the tubes manufactured by SSTP for freedom from internal defects in the entire volume of the tubes. The system, consisting of an automatic on-line Ultrasonic Testing machine with advanced computerized technology, also has the capability to measure dimensional accuracy of the tubes.

The machine consists of a Rotary ultrasonic test head with 16 ultrasonic transducer probes, rotating at 1200 rpm. The tubes can be tested at a speed of 60 meters per minute. Additionally, it has laser length measurement head, Defect marking system, Tube identification marking system and Eddy current testing head.

It can test tubes of outer diameter from 20 mm to 160 mm. having wall thickness from 2mm to 12mm and length from 3 meters to 24 meters. The Ultrasonic test head can scan for longitudinal and transverse and lamination defects both on the external surface and within the volume of the tube of even 0.3 mm depth.

The machine has been supplied by the Magnetic Analysis Corporation of USA.