New Techniques for Quantitative NDE

Retirement-for-cause, as well as other strategies for structural component utilization based on the expected lives of individual parts, requires nondestructive measurement techniques to evaluate flaw severity. Ideally, a technique should estimate failure-related flaw parameters as accurately as possible, as well as the variances in these estimates. This paper discusses the development of such a capability for the case of ultrasonics. A review of the basic methodology used to establish such capabilities will be presented, followed by a detailed discussion of specific techniques which have been developed.