Making NDT Part of the Process Dr. Jean F. Bussiere (jean.bussiere@nrc.ca), Director Industrial Materials Institute National Research Council of Canada. NDT, as applied to manufacturing, is mostly used to inspect the quality of parts at the end of the process. This can often result in high costs. Instead of focusing on the quality of parts, it is better to focus on the process, to prevent rejection of parts, thus increasing savings. Typical applications are found in the Aluminum and Glass industries, for both use thickness measurement applied with NDT sensors. The steel industry concentrates on controlling the temperature, chemistry, microstructure and material behavior, as well as mechanical properties. The sensors demands are effective, non invasive, robust, reliable and must be inexpensive. Ultrasonics are applied to measure the grain size profile of steel by sound attenuation; this was applied as real time monitoring of grain size growth during heat treatment. Laser ultrasonics can be used for flaw detection in a very early stage on the hot product. Thermal spray coating process control was another application that Dr. Bussiere introduced. Rolf Diederichs (writer of this review), brought up some other points during the discussion. During the many years he worked in this field, he often met manufactures in search of solutions for their 'very important needs' and at the beginning were very enthusiastic about the prospect of NDT as a problem-solver. However, as time went on, interest waned. Typical reasons have been: Too expensive even for a retrofit of the process line. Wrong results of the NDT sensor under the influence of process conditions. If redesign of the production machine was needed, nobody wanted to do it, since it took a very long time to establish this as a standard. Bottom line: the costs were just too high. Application of Ultrasonic Testing Methods for Volumetric and Surface lnspection of CANDU Pressure Tubes. M.Trelinski - Ontario Hydro Nuclear Technology Services Mr. Trelinski introduced an Ultrasonic system "CIGAR", a pressure tube inspection system which has been used successfully over the last twelve years. It has proven to be a reliable, accurate tool for detection, characterization and sizing. The sizing technique is based on a crack depth measurement by evaluation of the pulse arrival time of crack tip and bottom. The results of a 0.6 mm notch were demonstrated. In the discussion he made clear that in 95% of cases only the impulse echo signal is used as opposed to the diffracted signals which are to mostly too weak. Mr. Trelinski showed some impressive colorful B-scan images, which he admitted are nice but not very useful. Mechanized Ultrasonic Inspection of Large Diameter Gas Pipeline Girth Welds M. Moles - R/D Tech Mississauga ; N.Dube - R/D Tech Quebec City ; E.A.Ginzel - Materials Research Institute There has been a great deal of discussion on the pros and cons of TOFD in weld inspection. This presentation offered some background on the application of mechanized UT to pipeline construction and went on to demonstrate how TOFD is not an effective stand-alone UT technique for this application but acts as an effective safety net for some critical defects. During the discussion Mr Moles explained that today ultrasonics are better than X-ray. The Engine Titanium Consortium Goals, Achievements and Future Plans K. Smith - Pratt and Whitney Florida ; L. Bruscha - IOWA State University Contact: L.Brasche email: lbrasche@cnde.iastate.edu Lisa Bransche, Associate Director of the CNDE at Iowa State University, is the program manager of the FAA Center for Aviation System Reliability, and facilitator for the Engine Titanium Consortium whose work has been received a grant. The program was initialized due to the disaster of United Flight 232 in 1989 which resulted in the loss of 111 lives. The National Transportation Safety board concluded that a titanium defect, known as "hard alpha" was involved in the accident. Efforts are underway to provide implications for detectability. POD estimates for billet and forgings will be provided at the close of the program. NDTnet provided more information about this in the ASNT Pittsburgh Fall 1997 Report. During the conference we invited Lisa Bransche to submit an e-file of the proceedings and/or permission to use for NDTnet. Her answer was "Not Possible due our policies". Question: Is this the best way for publicly funded work to make their results available? Especially if the information contained could save lives? It was noted that conference publishers got the material so perhaps this "no use" policy applies only to NDTnet. Remote Visual Testing (Rvt) For Internal Pressure Vessel Inspection Bruce A. Pellegrino, R.Linder, Visual Inspection Technologies, Inc., email: brucep@v-i-t.com Bruce A. Pellegrino presented a paper which has already been published in NDTnet No. 8. AUGUST 1998. The article details a video inspection camera system which has been successfully used to inspect several hundred vessels to date. Users report savings between U.S. $5,000 - $50,000 per deployment by not having to shut down or send personnel into these vessels. Additionally, a faster, safer, more thorough and better documented inspection is achieved. The video images have been digitized and transmitted over the INTERNET to corporate engineering headquarters for analysis, archiving and trending. Review of IAR NDI Research in Support of Aging Aircraft A.Fahr, D.S. Forsyth, D.W. Schindel, ; C.E. Chapman - Institute for Aerospace Research, National Research Council Canada Contact: A.Fahr email: ABBAS.FAHR@NRC.CA Fatigue cracks and corrosion are the main aging aircraft concerns, said David Forsyth from IAR. Developments of ultrasonic guided waves have been carried out in close collaboration with Tektrend. Air-coupled ultrasonic testing also showed encouraging results. Surface waves have been used for detection of cracks under fasteners. He introduced the Edge of Light method which has been recently developed and patented at NRC. Digital X-Ray is applied for the inspection of thickness losses at IAR. An official approval of the guided wave method will be take a while, but until then it might be applied as an informal inspection method, Forsyth said. Laser Ultrasonics for Inspection and Characterization of Aeronautic Materials. This presentation was made by Jean-Pierre Monchalin, the so-called father of laser ultrasonics. He also presented this paper at the ECNDT'1998 in Copenhagen. Laser-Ultrasonics in brief: Advantages: Non-contact and at a distance (application to high temperature) Complex shapes Small spot or large spot probing Efficient generation of surface waves and plate waves No water Drawbacks: The emitting transducer is the material Sensitivity less than piezoelectric (at detection), but solved to the point it is usually adequate Cost (depends on application) - Jean-Pierre Monchalin also made another presentation on behalf of C.K. Jen: "Novel Clad Ultrasonic Buffer Rods for the Monitoring of Industrial Materials Processing". Rolf Diederichs started a spirited discussion; (earlier we mentioned Rolf's experience in the area of process control, back in his pre-Internet days). Measurement with probes in dies is possible, years ago Rolf did the trials himself together with manufacturer and machine makers. But what was the result? Again the main problems we mentioned above. No machine maker like Krupp Kautex or Battenfeld Fisher has followed such idealistic ideas for years; selling machines is their main business, not causing price increases by adding NDT elements, whether such additions are needed or not. An Enhanced Florescent Liquid Penetrant Inspection Technique for Measurement of Surface Cracks M. Yanishevsky - Department of National Defense Contact: M. Yanishevsky email: ab151@issc.debbs.ndhq.dud.ca In his presentation, Marko Yanishevsky made effective use of the unusually long 45 min allotted to each speaker. Videos showed attendees the visibility of enhanced LPI. With the tensile test load it is possible to overcome the compressive residual stresses to open up these cracks. Cracks with surface length of 0.3 mm could be reliably measured using this technique.