NDE and knowledge engineering - a growing partnership

Certified quality of goods, products and services and the safe use and operation of technical systems are the backbone of any successful industrial activity. The internationalization of markets and productions is changing the way of innovation management that takes advantage of the best technology globally available. Consequently, the knowledge and the resulting progress in technology has become a valuable product that is generated and increasingly exploited through strategic global alliances of excellence. Nondestructive Testing (NDT) methods assure the safe use and operation of materials and technical systems. The use of NDT helps to monitor the performance of industrial processes for high quality output and assist in securing the human environment. Effective and efficient NDT must be applied on the same scientific and technical level of the inspection problem to be solved by the NDT engineer. However, the direct and obvious profits from NDT sales cannot justify the investments in new NDT technologies that were spent for high-tech mass-production commodities. Thus, NDT engineering is facing the challenge of smart-knowledge engineering. We already can observe the formation of globally acting NDT groups (enterprises) taking advantage of the available resources. The globalization of NDT engineering providing suitable high-tech solutions is illustrated with examples of new NDT equipment for quantitative UT, material fatigue state scanning and 'Nanoscopes'