The potential and need for NDT innovations

Usually, innovations in NDT are part of many main-stream, state-of-the-art development efforts in science and technology and applicable regulations, codes and standards often significantly slow down the development of innovative products. Fortunately, the world is changing. The formation of global markets, mobility of production, and effective international scientific networks are accelerating the dynamics of innovations pushed by a new dimension of application demands. In this presentation, we outline these challenges for NDT scientists and engineers along the value-added chain of producing and operating technical products and systems. We start with the contribution of NDT to the development of new materials and the control of production processes by integrating smart-sensors with feedback capabilities. We also discuss the impact of new maintenance and lifetime-extension management strategies, such as risk based applications and health monitoring. The growing demand for techniques that support human activities to make life safer and more secure also poses challenges and presents opportunities for new contributions from the NDT community. We conclude that the market is open, growing, and ready for NDT scientists to move forward and meet these demands.