Automation of Ultrasonic Testing Technology for Soldered Joints of Heat Exchanger Elements

This article discusses the automation of ultrasonic echo-pulse method technology for testing soldered joints of heat exchanger elements. The article describes a test object with a complex geometric shape and defects in soldered joints that occur during manufacturing, such as "non-soldering" and "partial non-soldering". The article describes the problems of existing solutions for quality control of soldered joints, which consist in the complexity of positioning the piezoelectric transducer, which leads to insufficient efficiency and reliability of the testing results, which justifies the relevance of the work. Finite element modeling was carried out to establish the dependencies of geometric displacements during positioning of the piezoelectric transducer, based on the results of which an algorithm was developed that allows increasing the efficiency and reliability of the testing results. An experimental testing of the created automated ultrasonic testing system was carried out, which confirmed that the proposed method for automating the technology of ultrasonic testing of soldered joints of heat exchanger elements is more efficient and reliable compared to existing solutions.