Creep damage zone detection in exploited power plant tubes ZIP with magnetoacoustic emission

The magnetoacoustic emission (MAE) is very sensitive to microstructure modifications that lead to changes in local energy barriers. This is the case of ferromagnetic steels exploited in power plant boilers, in which a progressive growth and coagulation of precipitates leads to decrease in the MAE intensity. Since the gas temperature distribution inside the boiler is not homogenous, the creep damage process may progress with different speed in different parts of the superheater tubes. The aim of this work is to verify if it is possible to detect the most creep affected zones of the exploited tubes.