Quality control using nondestructive testing

Abstract

The operating requirements of the different industrial equipment and parts, whether in the maritime, aeronautical, manufacturing, automotive, energy, etc. fields, require very strict demands in terms of the quality of the parts used and the joining mechanisms in their construction. The evaluation of the condition of metal parts and joints is not only limited to the construction period but also throughout the service life in order to activate mechanisms for the prevention and/or detection of failures in the parts and joints. This helps to avoid that a worsening of incipient failures can have serious consequences on the operation of the machinery. In order to avoid these problems, there are techniques known as non-destructive testing (NDT), whose application allows the detection of failures in welds, castings, concrete, etc. In addition to their proven effectiveness, these techniques are applied without the need to alter the physical composition of the material under test, allowing them to be carried out even during their operation. In this work the fundamentals of nondestructive testing and the study of some relevant cases are presented, such as the study of the thickness of pipes and detection of the reduction of the thickness of the internal walls due to the effects of corrosion using ultrasound and parasitic currents, the detection of a crack in a welding job using penetrating liquids in one case and in another by infrared thermography and finally in the last case the inspection of the thickness of a pipe by means of parasitic currents.