Development and application of DR automated equipment for butt weld of large storage tank wall

During the installation process of large storage tank wall, ultrasonic testing and film radiographic testing are common techniques to detect the flaw of butt weld. However, many problems of those techniques occurs, such as low flaw detection rate, low detection efficiency and high labor intensity. In this paper, one method of non-destructive testing(NDT) of storage tank wall butt weld using digital radiographic(DR) technique was proposed, and the experiment was performed. One automated equipment was developed to control the radiographic machine and the imaging board operate in a certain way for automatic detection. At last, the engineering application was carried out in the installation process of large storage tank wall, and one porosity welding flaw was successfully detected.