— The ECHOPLUS Research and Production Center celebrated its 33rd anniversary this year. By the significant date, the company joined the group of Russian leaders in the development and production of modern devices for ultrasonic non-destructive testing of pipeline systems, including nuclear power plant reactor installations. Currently, almost all Russian nuclear power plants are equipped with products of the ECHOPLUS. Alexey Kharitonovich VOPILKIN, founder and CEO of the ECHOPLUS Company, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Vice President of Russian Society for Non-Destructive Testing and Technical Diagnostics met with a correspondent of the publication "Точка Опоры" and gave a detailed answer to the question: "What do you consider the greatest achievement of the ECHOPLUS in 33 years years of activity?"
— The most important achievements of ECHOPLUS are the reputation of a conscientious developer and manufacturer of reliable systems for detecting and controlling defects in metal structures, as well as the creation of a strong, cohesive team of professionals. This is the success of our business. The company's products are used at the most important facilities of nuclear energy, the oil and gas industry, and the machine-building industry, both in our country and abroad.
Now our business is securely based on three "pillars": development, sales of our own products and outsourcing. To date, we have developed 42 techniques, some of which have no world analogues! We have created ultrasonic inspection systems that allow us to identify and visualize hidden defects of the most complex welded joints, taking into account the determination of their nature and residual life.
Moreover, we have developed ultrasonic automated means of non-destructive testing of equipment and pipelines based on computer technologies that provide diagnostics of objects with the determination of real defect parameters. As well as the development of methods for monitoring objects using automated systems with coherent data processing. In addition, we carry out an examination of the technical condition of equipment and pipelines in order to assess the resources of their operation and issue conclusions on the possibility of their further operation.
Today, more than 50% of the company's revenue is the exercise of control. The Center has supplied a significant number of its own devices and systems to the NPP, our specialists carry out control at almost all nuclear power plants in Russia and a number of nuclear power plants abroad. The control of the primary circuit is especially important. It is the most dangerous and the most loaded – radiation, high pressure and temperature – a priori, crack growth is inevitable. And it is necessary to clearly determine up to what point it can be operated in order to further ensure timely repairs. Thanks to this approach, the volume of repairs has decreased many times.
We are constantly conducting research and experimental work. Since no two objects are the same, we upgrade the methodology, scanners, and software every time. We get into the physics of one phenomenon, then another. For modeling, we use a very powerful certified SHIVA program, modeling objects, defects, frequencies, ranges on it, as a result, we find the optimal solution, which we already put into the development of sensors, devices, and techniques.
The company has an NC research laboratory located on an area of 180 m2 and equipped with the necessary equipment. Everything is certified – equipment, techniques, personnel.
Highly qualified personnel work at NPC ECHO+ at all levels, four doctors of technical sciences and three candidates of sciences work in the team. We constantly train our specialists and generously share the results of our research. Over the years, the staff of our Center has published more than 400 scientific articles, several books and monographs.
Today, the list of products of ECHOPLUS includes automated ultrasonic inspection systems (AUZK), scanners, flaw detectors, phased array prisms (FR) and software. For the first two decades, we have been developing and developing holographic methods of automated control, but in recent years we have switched to the use of phased array antennas. After a detailed study of the technology and devices of headlights in practice, the scientists of our center have a lot of ideas on how to improve the technology and create more advanced equipment for automated control systems. It is in the automated mode that all the advantages of the technology called "Digital Phased Aperture" (CFA) are fully manifested.
Without going into scientific and technical details, I will highlight the advantages of the CFA. Firstly, such an acoustic field is formed in the product, a weakly diverging narrow beam with a width of less than 1 mm, which provides a high resolution – twice as high as with holography. The greater the thickness of the product, the more significant this advantage is.
Due to the formation of a narrow beam of rays, the sensitivity of the control increased by about 10 times, it became possible to control products of large thickness (300 mm or more) with the ability to measure the size of defects from 1 mm. Note that all coherent imaging methods are characterized, along with the main image, by the presence of false images (phantoms) associated with other wave modes that inevitably occur on the defect. Phantoms make it difficult to analyze the results and prevent the automation of the analysis. The CFA technology allows these very phantoms to be turned for good: all images of defects obtained by any course of rays turn into a single image without phantoms. And then you can automate both the analysis and the receipt of the control protocol. And finally, when forming the correct image, the profile of the inner surface to the right and left of the weld plays an important role, which does not always coincide with the drawing and is unknown in advance. This ignorance leads to blurring of the image and an increase in the error in measuring the size of defects.
The CFA technology allows, when placing antenna arrays on both sides of the seam, to restore the profile of the inner surface and, taking it into account, obtain a new image in which the error will be reduced to zero. This possibility formed the basis of the technology proposed by ECHOPLUS for measuring the thickness and profile of the inner surface along the entire perimeter of the welded joint, which provides additional information about its quality. There are a number of other less significant advantages of the CFA technology – a higher signal-to-noise ratio when monitoring austenitic welds, non-etalon and simultaneous measurement of the thickness and velocity of longitudinal and transverse waves. These and other advantages have just been realized in the new AUGUR-ART system – a manual multichannel ultrasonic flaw detector using phased array technology, digital antenna focusing and the TOFD method. I think it is now one of the best devices on the Russian market. Only we can control welded joints of large thickness. This is our niche. No one can do this now, but we are in control. There are few such compounds, but they exist, for example, in petrochemistry, and now we are directing our attention there.
We also work with neural networks. By order of Rosenergoatom Concern JSC, a "System of automated ultrasonic control for welded joints with a full automation cycle" has been developed. I put the scanner on and nothing else needs to be done, automatic scanning, data recording, processing, decryption and obtaining a conclusion are underway. Here is a complete automaton. This system is used to control the welded joint of a large diameter steam generator.
We are currently working on creating a centralized database of defect images. Data files are anonymized, i.e. they are disconnected from a specific object of control, and can be used both for personnel training and for training automation algorithms.
Of course, this is not a complete list of the achievements of the ECHOPLUS, which we can rightfully be proud of. But I think that the most important achievements are still ahead of us, because 33 years is the age of striving for the future, and not self–admiration for achievements, even if they are world-class. Therefore, we focus on breakthrough solutions that allow our customers to surpass the current level of control, improve the safety, reliability and usability of systems.