This practice provides guidelines for the application of immersed longitudinal wave examination to the detection and quantitative evaluation of discontinuities in materials.

Although not all requirements of this practice can be applied universally to all examination situations and materials, it does provide a basis for establishing contractual criteria between suppliers and purchasers of materials for performing immersed pulse-echo examination, and may be used as a general guide for writing detailed specifications for particular applications.

This practice is directed towards the evaluation of discontinuities detectable at normal beam incidence. If discontinuities at other orientations are of concern, alternate scanning techniques are required.

1.1 This practice describes procedures for the ultrasonic examination of bulk materials or parts by transmitting pulsed, longitudinal waves through a liquid couplant into the material and observing the indications of reflected waves (see Fig. 1). It covers only examinations in which one search unit is used as both transmitter and receiver (pulse-echo) and in which the part or material being examined is coupled to the part by a liquid column or is totally submerged in the couplant (either method is considered to be immersion testing). This practice includes general requirements and procedures which may be used for detecting discontinuities and for making a relative or approximate evaluation of the size of discontinuities.

1.2 This practice replaces Practice E214 and provides more detailed procedures for the selection, standardization, and operation of an examination system and for evaluation of the indications obtained.

1.3 Units—The values stated in inch-pound units are to be regarded as standard. The values given in parentheses are mathematical conversions to SI units that are provided for information only and are not considered standard.

1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.

FIG. 1 Basic Immersion Setup