Non-destructive Testing (NDT)

NDT refers to a set of methods employed to examine materials and component in such a way that provides material examination without changing or destroying their usefulness. Such a technique can be used to identify and size the surface and subsurface flaws and defects.

NDT is often used as a Quality Assurance management tool, necessary to reassure the safety and reliability of equipment used in the oil and gas industry. Applications of NDT can be found in oil platforms, refineries, pipelines, power stations, airplanes, space shuttles, motor vehicles, and so on. These are all inspected using NDT methods. The materials which fail to meet the NDT tests also fail to achieve what they were designed for. They are also prone to survive less than their projected life due to undetected defects which later on becomes fatal. Modern day NDT methods can be used in all stages of equipment life, be it manufacturing, fabrication or in-service. This results in product integrity and reliability as well as the control over manufacturing processes to lower production costs, while maintaining a uniform quality level.

The requirement for accurate thickness measurements is found across many industries including aerospace, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and food processing. Either for quality control in manufacturing or in-service verification often access is only available from one side and speed is critical. The wall thickness from most materials can be measured ultrasonically including metals, composites, plastics and glass using a simple hand-held digital gauge.

In certain environments, a coating of paint or other non-metallic material may have been applied to protect the part. A common application would be a painted pipe used in the petrochemical industry. In this case a conventional ultrasonic gauge would give measurement errors from the presence of the paint. However, with the correct gauge with through paint mode, measurement through the paint is possible resulting in the correct wall thickness measurement underneath.

NDT Systems offers a range of standard and high-resolution thickness gauges with features including A-trace display, B-scan, automatic probe recognition, data logging and much more. Furthermore, large area thickness mapping (C-scan) can be achieved using our Raptor imaging flaw detector and range of scanners.

As the use of adhesively bonded joints and fittings has increased across many industries, the need for testing bond integrity has grown. Metal to metal bonded joints, sandwich constructions with various skin and core materials, bonded carbon fibre composite structures have all become important in manufacturing as well as in-service repair patches and adhesively bonded re-inforcements. The integrity of these bonds is critical to the quality of the final product. Conventional ultrasonic methods can be limited for these applications and so a variety of alternative methods have been developed to handle this range of material combination.

Shearography is an optical Non-destructive testing method that provides fast and accurate information about internal anomalies in different materials. Sherography is being extensively used in production, research and development and in-field within the aerospace, automotive, marine and wind industry.