New trends in NDE and health monitoring

This paper will discuss opportunities and future trends in non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and health monitoring based on new sensor principles and advanced microelectronics. Conventional NDE is based on single probe approaches, where systems are portable and used for local inspection, or on multi probe techniques with the support personnel in workshops using complex NDE systems with multiple sensors. Miniaturization of electronics and new sensor approaches allow realizing local probe techniques. This denotes that the probe and data acquisition are located at the structure to be monitored or inspected. Hence, this approach can be used for continuous monitoring as well as for periodic inspections and will increase the efficiency of inspection procedures and reduce inspection time.