Design and testing of an ultrasonic projector for operation in liquid sodium

PRUNA ultrasonic transducer (French acronym standing for "PRojecteur Ultrasonore en Na") is designed for operation under liquid sodium. Under sodium tests results obtained show that this type of transducer has very high sensitivity and sufficiently good acoustic properties to perform basic NDT of a structure immersed under liquid sodium at approx. 200°C using conventional immersion ultrasonic technics. Artificial defects made in a stainless steel block could clearly be detected.