A comparative evaluation of ultrasonic testing of AISI 316L welds made by shielded metal arc welding and gas tungsten arc welding processes

Ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds prepared by two different welding processes is studied in this paper. The two welding processes considered are shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) and the ultrasonic testing technique used is time-of-flight diffraction (ToFD). Identical artificial flaws were implanted in both welds during the welding process. Austenitic characteristics consisting of grain orientation distribution and anisotropy show that the GTAW specimen is more isotropic than the SMAW due to the orientation of its grains. Moreover, comparison of echo amplitudes shows higher attenuation for the weld prepared by the GTAW process. The specimens were examined by the ultrasonic ToFD technique under identical conditions. B-scan images obtained from ToFD measurements of the two welds indicate that inspection of the specimen prepared by the SMAW process is easier than the one made by the GTAW process due to higher scattering of waves in the latter. The measurements also showed that the probe positioning is very important in the detection of diffracted echoes when using the ToFD technique.