Ultrasonic Testing (UT) Inspection Services

What do ultrasonic inspection services include?

Ultrasonic inspection services cover UT thickness surveys at your CMLs, shear-wave and phased array examination of welds, corrosion mapping and lamination checks, carried out to ASME Section V Article 4 or ISO 17640 and the acceptance code you name. Atlantis NDT mobilises qualified technicians to sites across the USA and issues Level III-reviewed reports.

What you receive

• Readings or scan data tabulated per CML, weld or grid, at locations you can find again
• Indications located and sized, and evaluated against the acceptance code you name
• The procedure, technique sheet and calibration records used on the job
• Technician certification records to the governing SNT-TC-1A written practice
• A report reviewed by an ASNT NDT Level III before it is issued

What UT finds, and what it does not

Finds: Internal planar flaws such as cracks and lack of fusion, wall loss and remaining thickness, laminations and disbonds.

Limits: Coarse-grained austenitic welds and castings need special techniques; rough surfaces, thin sections and complex geometry reduce coverage; a manual scan leaves no image unless the data is encoded.

Where we work: nationwide. Technicians are mobilised to your site anywhere in the USA; apart from the Houston office there is no local office, so mobilisation is planned and quoted for each job.

PAUT inspection services · weld inspection services · request an inspection quote

UT pipe inspection and pipe wall thickness testing

UT pipe inspection on process piping is mostly thickness work: readings at the condition monitoring locations (CMLs) that your API 570 inspection plan defines, so each campaign measures the same metal and the corrosion rate between campaigns is real. Readings follow a written procedure based on ASTM E797, the standard practice for measuring thickness by the manual ultrasonic pulse-echo contact method, which ASME Section V adopts in Article 23 as SE-797. The report states the instrument mode used for the readings.

Where wall loss is localised, for example under deposits, at injection points or along the bottom of a line, single readings can miss the minimum, so an encoded grid replaces them: see corrosion mapping services. Atlantis NDT mobilises UT technicians to plants anywhere in the USA and returns readings tabulated per CML, with the instrument, probe and calibration records attached.

Sources: API 570, Piping Inspection Code; ASTM E797/E797M; ASME BPVC Section V, Article 23 (SE-797).

Who reviews the work

Atlantis NDT's ASNT NDT Level III is its founder, Anoop Rayavarapu: ASNT NDT Level III in UT, RT, MT, PT and VT, with 11+ years of international NDT field experience. Procedures and technique sheets are approved at Level III, and reports are reviewed by an ASNT NDT Level III before they are issued. See his profile and a real engagement: UT weld inspection procedure code update.

What you receive from an ultrasonic examination

A UT report is only worth what can be reconstructed from it later. Every Atlantis examination is delivered with the readings located against the component — not a bare list of numbers — together with the instrument, probe and calibration block identities, the velocity and temperature corrections applied, and the procedure revision the work was performed to. For thickness surveys, readings land at defined condition monitoring locations so the next campaign measures the same metal and the corrosion rate is real rather than an artefact of moved probes.

Thickness and corrosion mapping

The commonest UT engagement is establishing remaining wall: single-point thickness at CMLs feeding API 510, 570 and 653 remaining-life calculation, and scanned corrosion mapping where the damage is localised and a grid would miss it. The deliverable that matters is not the reading but the trend — which is why location discipline and instrument-to-instrument consistency get more attention in our procedures than the gauge brand does.

Weld examination — conventional, phased array and TOFD

Shear-wave examination finds the planar flaws radiography struggles with — lack of fusion, cracking — and reports their depth. Where coverage must be demonstrable or the geometry is demanding, phased array sweeps a range of angles from one position and records everything for later re-analysis, and TOFD adds sizing accuracy on the flaws that matter most. Which technique a weld actually needs is a scoping decision we will argue honestly, because specifying PAUT where conventional UT suffices spends your budget on data nobody will use.

What UT will not do, said plainly

Ultrasonics needs a transmitting surface — heavy scale, loose coatings and very rough profiles degrade or defeat it. Flaws oriented parallel to the beam return little whatever the technique, coarse-grained austenitic welds scatter sound badly enough to demand specialist approaches, and the near surface sits in a dead zone that a complementary surface method should cover. A provider who never mentions these limits is selling coverage they cannot deliver.

Codes and the evidence chain

Work is performed to ASME Section V Articles 4 and 5, ISO 17640 and ISO 16810 as the contract requires, with acceptance from the governing construction or in-service code. Technician certification under SNT-TC-1A or ISO 9712, calibration traceability and procedure control travel with every report — the bundle an auditor actually asks for, assembled at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

Can UT be done in service, without a shutdown?

Mostly yes — thickness and much weld examination proceed on live equipment, and high-temperature techniques with appropriate couplants and delay lines work on surfaces conventional probes cannot touch. What genuinely needs an outage is internal access and anything insulation must come off for at scale.

UT or RT for our welds?

They find different things: RT images volumetric flaws and leaves a picture; UT finds tight planar flaws and gives depth. Codes increasingly permit UT in place of RT for thick sections, but the honest answer depends on the flaw types your process makes credible — see the full RT vs UT comparison.

Related: the complete UT technical guide · phased array services · UT definition · request an examination.

Related reading

• Structural UT is only meaningful against the code that grades it. the AWS D1.1 ultrasonic acceptance tables.
• Section V supplies the method rules every referencing code points at. ASME Section V Article 4 requirements.
• PAUT is the technique most often specified above conventional UT. phased array ultrasonic testing in depth.

Clients who want their own people qualified alongside the service

Many clients pair the service with capability: technicians certified under their own programme who handle routine examination between campaigns. ultrasonic testing training covers the level structure, the practical examination, and how on-site delivery under an ASNT Level III works.

UT by sector

What UT is used for differs sharply by industry — the assets, the damage mechanisms and the acceptance regime all change. Sector detail: Refining · Petrochemical · LNG · Offshore · Pipeline · Marine & Shipbuilding · Aviation & Aerospace · Power Generation · Mining & Minerals · Fabrication & Welding · Automotive Manufacturing · Steel & Primary Metals · Rail.

Practise ultrasonic testing

Rehearse calibration, scanning and reporting in a browser before the job, and read the practice that governs contact weld UT.

• Ultrasonic testing simulator: calibration to report
• Phased array UT simulator
• TOFD simulator
• Process plant NDT simulator: weld, corrosion and tube jobs
• Free A-scan simulator, no sign-up
• ASTM E164 weld UT

Ultrasonic inspection services: buyer questions

Is ultrasonic testing done on site or in a laboratory?

On site. Atlantis NDT mobilises UT technicians and equipment to your plant, shop or job site anywhere in the USA; apart from the Houston office there is no local office, so mobilisation is planned and quoted for each job.

What do you need from us to quote a UT job?

The component list or isometrics, material and nominal thickness, the CML or weld numbers, access and insulation details, operating temperature, the acceptance code and your dates. Every job is quoted on request, and we reply within one business day.

Can UT measure pipe wall thickness through paint?

Often, yes. In echo-to-echo mode a thickness gauge measures between successive back-wall echoes, which leaves out a thin, well-bonded coating; thick or disbonded coatings are removed at the reading point. The measurement practice is ASTM E797, and the report states which mode was used.

Who is qualified to perform ultrasonic testing?

Under ASNT SNT-TC-1A the employer certifies its technicians to a written practice: a Level II sets up, performs and interprets the examination, and a Level III approves procedures. Atlantis NDT reports are reviewed by an ASNT NDT Level III before they are issued.