Editorial Introduction to the 19(th) World Conference on Non-Destructive Testing (WCNDT-2016).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ultras.2016.06.020 0041-624X/ 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Organized by the German Society for Non-Destructive Testing (DGZfP), the 19 World Conference on Non-Destructive Testing (WCNDT-2016) was held successfully 13–17 June 2016, at the International Congress Center Munich (ICM), Germany. Moved around the continents of the world, this is the second time that WCNDT was held in Germany since 1970 (in Hanover). Following the success of this series of conferences since 1955 (in Brussels) at 4-year intervals, WCNDT-2016 once again emphasizes the significance of NDT for the global community with powerful contributions, and it reflects the state of the art and most recent advances and developments related to NDT technologies. Highlighting the development and progress of NDT around the world, WCNDT-2016 attracted 1000+ abstracts from 46 countries. Nearly 2200 NDT experts from academia and industry all over the world attended the biggest ever world conference on NDT. During the week, 144 application-focused sessions were organized in which 673 oral presentations were delivered by frontline researchers and developers, along with another 181 posters presented. These oral presentations and posters encompassed all aspects of NDT and its associated technologies. This year, WCNDT was accompanied by an exhibition of more than 200 companies specializing in NDT, in ICM’s 7000 m exhibition space, presenting their latest developments, products, and projects. The exhibition served as a showcase of today’s NDT technology and a forecast of future developments, ideas, and visions in this area. Compared with its preceding versions, WCNDT-2016 witnessed a substantial increase in submissions pertaining to the modeling of guided ultrasonic waves (GUWs), new sensor concepts, data processing, information fusion, imaging construction, and uncertainty evaluation. These together reflected a clear increase and burgeoning development in R&D of GUW-based structural health monitoring (SHM) in the NDT community. Now on the verge of maturity for diverse real-world applications, the emerging GUW-based SHM, in comparison with conventional NDT approaches, has become an encouraging conduit for facilitating continuous, automated, cost-effective surveillance of the integrity of engineering structures. As another spotlight at this conference, the research in non-linear ultrasonics and acoustics still stands out as a hot topic, highlighting the consistent effort in the community to glean the nonlinear features of ultrasonic and acoustic waves for NDT and SHM. In this sense, WCNDT-2016 has provided an excellent platform for researchers and developers working in this area to share their latest research outcomes, to exchange ideas, and to explore future opportunities. As an associated event to the conference, an ad-hoc Editorial Board Meeting for Ultrasonics was held at the Ramada Hotel Munich on 13 June 2016 following the adjournment of the first day’s programme. The Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Arthur Every, three Associate Editors, Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam, Prof. Younho Cho and Prof. Zhongqing Su, as well as Elsevier Senior Publisher, Ms. Frauke Muenzel, were present to the Board Meeting. A number of issues related to the future strategic development of Ultrasonics were well discussed. The Board Meeting was followed by a dinner.