Masters Theses

Abstract

"The annual inspection of control rods at the UMR Reactor (UMRR) is performed manually using a feeler gauge to measure the bow of the rod and via visual inspection to identify pits. These inspection tasks are performed to semi-quantitatively estimate the service life and in-service compliance of the control rod. Since these conventional inspection methods yield subjective results, and in the process, personnel receive a radiation dose, there is a need to automate this task in order to reduce personnel exposure and institute a quantitative means of inspection. The objectives of the present work were to automate this inspection task by using a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) to measure bow and applying machine vision to identify pits.

CMM is used to measure bow on the control rod surface along with UNIGRAPHICS-NX2 CAD interface software. This method generates surface topology based on the points collected or digitized from the CMM, and slope analysis is performed on the surface to measure the amount of bow on the control rod surface.

The conventional visual inspection to identify pits on the control rod surface can be automated using a machine vision technique. Since the in-service control rods were not available to capture images and to measure the number of pits, the machine vision method was applied on SAE 1018 steel coupons immersed in an oxygen saturated deionized water solution. Images were captured after each immersion test cycle at different light intensity to reveal coupon surface topography and were analyzed for the number of pits using EPIX XCAP-Std software. The analyzed images provided quantitative results of the steel coupons and demonstrated that the method can be applied for identifying pits on a control rod surface in place of conventional visual inspection"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Tokuhiro, Akira

Committee Member(s)

Liou, Frank W.
O'Keefe, Matthew

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering

Comments

Accompanying CD-ROM, available at Missouri S&T Library, contains Appendix J.
System requirements: Windows media player; Image program capable of displaying bitmap images.

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Publication Date

Spring 2005

Pagination

x, 179 pages, CD-ROM

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-178)

Rights

© 2005 Shreekanth Vadakattu, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Nuclear fuel rods -- Inspection Computer vision Measuring instruments Automation

Thesis Number

T 8792

Print OCLC #

70831563

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