Proceedings Article | 25 April 2023
KEYWORDS: Reliability, Nondestructive evaluation, Inspection, Civil engineering, Industry, Safety, Data modeling, Industrial applications, Data acquisition, Nuclear power plants
Reliability evaluations are useful tools to assess the capability of non-destructive testing (NDT) methods. The knowledge of reliability leads to a deeper understanding of the methods applied and to a more advanced use of equipment, material and work force. In addition, each condition assessment also depends on the reliability of the inspection data acquired. However, only in a few industrial sectors, such as nuclear, aviation or aerospace, the performance of reliability evaluations is a regular procedure. Mostly due to the fact, that institutions require reliability evaluations and therefore specifications guide the way for a standardized assessment. In other sectors, like civil engineering or automotive, the performance of NDT reliability evaluation is uncommon. Firstly, because it is not mandatory and secondly, there are very few experiences and also guidance, in form of specifications, is missing as well. Consequently, the benefit of knowing about the reliability of NDT methods is unexploited. In order to change the mind-set and to support sectors, like the civil engineering and automotive sector, the normPOD-project developed a generalized POD approach. This approach demonstrates (i) how to include different data sources (e.g., simulation), (ii) how to plan a correct set up for experiments in which mathematical methods can be used and (iii) how to evaluate the results, so they contribute towards the quality assessment of the components. For the sake of validation, two different case studies have been following the approach. The first case study focused on the inspection of ferritic welds extracted from a power plant and the second one assessed the reliability of reinforced concrete tunnel inspections. This paper emphasizes the variety of testing conditions and highlights the steps for a standardized reliability assessment. The case studies reveal the applicability of the future standard and show the benefit of knowing the NDT capability
