This paper describes a major international collaborative project, partly funded by the Commission of the European Community, to develop NDT methods which can be applied during welding as an on- line process.

Deliberately defective welded test pieces representing various stages of weld completion have been manufactured. These have been used to develop and optimise ultrasonic and radioscopic techniques which overcome the problems of unfavourable geometry and can be applied at the elevated temperatures commonly present during welding. Signal processing techniques are being developed to improve inspection capability and automate defect detection and sentencing. Final demonstration trials will be performed in a welding environment.