If there are no defects in the material, the sound waves will pass through it, but if the sound waves hit a defect they will bounce off of it, indicating its presence. In ultrasonic testing, an inspector will use a probe or some other kind of transducer to send sound waves through the material they want to test. To get more specific, ultrasonic testing is done in materials to determine the presence of defects by measuring their thickness using high-frequency sound waves (typically 500kHz-20Mhz). Here is a menu for this guide to UTM, in case you’d like to jump around: Over the next several decades the technique gained wide adoption, and since then it has become one of the more common NDT methods. It wasn’t until 1928 that scientists started testing UT for industrial purposes, when a Soviet researcher named Sergei Sokolov found that sound waves could be used to identify defects in metal materials. Researchers wanted to identify ways that ships could find icebergs before they could see them, and they began testing sound waves for this purpose.Īfter these tests, sonic testing was developed further during World War I as a way to find submarines. The first ultrasonic thickness test was developed after the Titanic sank in 1912.

This method is commonly used by inspectors as one of many Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) testing methods, allowing them to collect information about the condition of an asset without having to damage it. It is most commonly used on metal, because metal conducts sound waves in a manner that supports this kind of measurement. Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is also often called Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement (UTM), Ultrasonic Thickness Testing (UTT), or Sonic Testing (ST).

Ultrasonic testing methods use sound waves to find defects and measure thickness. Ultrasonic testing is done in materials to determine whether there are flaws or defects present in a material, and also to determine the thickness of a material.

Ultrasonic Crack Testing Machine