Integration of NDT into life time management

Being a life management tool, nondestructive testing is designed to detect defects in components before they become critical under load. Nondestructive testing has consequently become a well-established technique to ensure the safe and economic operation of pressurised components. However, life assessment and prediction requires kmowledge about load conditions and history and material degradation along with a quantitative defect state evalation. Safety and econmics could be improved if nondestructive methods were able to control these problems. There are generally no practical nondestructive techniques for inspecting of monitoring pressurised components quantitatively for defect states, stress states and possible material degradation as the result of creep, fatigue or embrittlement. This paper stresses the need for possible future nondestructive technqiues which have already successfully demonstrated the potential of these new inspection objectives. The examples offered below outline t he future use of nondestructive testing to evaluate defect states and control early material degradation by way of hardness measurements. Thes technqiues can be integrated in life management software systems for the purpose of improving the reliability and economics of their application.