NDT: What is it ?

Non-destructive testing & evaluation (NDT & E) is a term used for the investigation of materials and structures with the intention of determining surface and subsurface defects without altering or destroying their original design and/or status.  NDT & E plays a crucial role in everyday life and is necessary to assure safety and reliability.

The most commonly used NDT & E techniques are:

• Visual Inspection
• Liquid Penetrants
• Acoustic Emission
• Magnetic Particles
• Eddy Currents
• Ultrasonics
• Radiography
• Shearography
• Thermography

Such techniques can then be used to monitor the integrity of the component or structure throughout its service life. Typical examples are found in aircraft and automotive applications, pipelines, bridges, buildings, power stations, etc, which are all inspected using NDT & E.

Biomechanical Solutions has extensive working expertise in advanced materials characterisation and testing using non-invasive NDT & E approaches. In particular, a strong research and development (R & D) aspect of the company has been mainly on developing a thorough, internationally recognised, understanding of imaging characteristics using NDT & E, through both modelling and experimental studies. Furthermore, Biomechanical Solutions could provide extensive R&D support to various thermography approaches (i.e. pulsed, pulsed phase, lock-in, vibro, etc), laser profilometry studies and ultrasonics inspection.

The company has closely been working, amongst others, on the development and/or application of new algorithms for automated NDT & E in collaboration with the University of Laval in Canada, the National Technical University of Athens in Greece, Zenon SA in Greece, and ENEA in Italy.