Application of Immersion Ultrasonic Testing For Non-Contact Quality Evaluation of Magnetically Impelled Arc Butt Welded Drive Shafts of Motor Vehicles

Abstract

The article presents contemporary ultrasonic methods that can be applied to evaluate the quality of transmission drive components of motor vehicles. The issues of non-destructive analysis of discontinuities in manufactured drive shafts, consisting currently of thin-walled tubes, were investigated in this study. The driveshaft elements were joined by using innovative method called Magnetically Impelled Arc Butt Welding (MIAB). For many years, a major challenge for engineers working with ultrasonic techniques was joining of thin-walled components (having thickness below 3 mm). In addition of this limitation, the problem of variable geometry of the weld flash on the weld perimeter was highlighted. To reduce the impact of mentioned factors the pseudo-surface waves (also known as lateral waves) have been applied in this study. In order to select optimal parameters of the ultrasonic beam propagation and to understand the physical-acoustic phenomena, the Finite Elements Method modelling was performed. The phenomena of wave transformation on medium boundary and reflections from artificial flaw have been analyzed by numerical modelling. The results of numerical analysis were confirmed by UT experimental research. The manufactured MIAB welded joints were tested with using in-house made experiment set-up. The selected configurations with various shapes and dimensions of samples, and various process parameters have been investigated. The results confirm the usefulness of pseudo-surface ultrasonic waves in UT quality evaluation of MIAB welded elements of drive shafts of motor vehicles.