Leak-Tester – Ultrasonic-Leak-Tester

The bicycle tube Leak-Tester
What do you do if your bicycle has a flat tyre? You disassemble the bicycle tube, pressurize it, put it in the water, check for bubbles and localise the leakage. We hope that this not necessary all too often for your bike. However, a similar procedure is done in industrial applications more than a Million times a day. A lot of products must be tight and are therefore tested in the production line according to the bike-tube method. We just like to mention a few products in automotive industries (fuel tank, fuel and brake components, wheels, pumps, …) but also in building technology (gas meter, radiator, air condition, …).

Bubble test by operator
One of the biggest advantages of this bubble test in the water bath by an operator is that with this method the leak is not only detected but immediately localised too. Therefore the original reason for the leakage may be found very quickly. The most common operator less leak detection methods only check for the existence of a leakage but can not localise it. In addition the bubble test is one of the most sensitive methods under real production boundary conditions as shown by experiments.

Subjective and bad test conditions
The big problem of operator testing is the fact that the result depends on the operator and is therefore subjective in general. In many cases the conditions for the bubble test are not really good – dirty water, bad illumination and low contrast between bubbles and background. All this leads to unreliability of bubble test by operator. The result is a decreasing acceptance of this method, especially in the automotive industry.

Ultrasonic-Leak-Testing –
The new dimension of bubble testing in water bath
By means of ultrasound these disadvantages can be overcome without loosing the advantage of localisation. In addition the sensitivity can be further increased, if necessary, while even very small bubbles can be detected which is hardly done by the operator. In many cases Ultrasonic-Leak-Testing can be compared with test gas methods.