In a developed world with a constant competition for productivity and market share, it is

fundamental to make sure that the products are consistent, reliable and ready for their duty.
Looking at these rigorous environment it is clear that the products needs to be certified of their
integrity before it can be delivered to the client.
In order to help industries, companies and engineering applications, Nondestructive
Testing Methods and Applications were and still being developed. NDE testing has its mainly
benefit as being non-destructive, this is important because the product can be tested in any step
of it construction without the need of being replaced caused by any destructive test. This
certainly improves productivity, reduce costs and can be applied to certify the quality at any time
of the manufacture. NDE is also utilized in aging infrastructures which are old functional
structures that needs to be certified of the continuing of its properties, this is applied because it is
highly desirable that replacement to be avoided, and instead of it, the monitoring of its condition
is the best option for systems that are beyond their lifetime, such as buildings, roads, bridges.
This kind of infrastructure would cause millions of dollar lost if it needed to be stopped for
replacements.
Since NDE is applied by an individual, it is possible that the results of an inspection to do
not be uniform from one inspector to another, or, it may change over time and changes by small
variations in a product. For this reason, it is important that some NDE standards exists to help
inspectors to follow certain rules which may reduce different results caused by inspectors
judgement. NDE presents different terminologies for different applications. NDE refers to
Nondestructive Evaluation that means tests and its role in the process, this will happens at most
of time. NDE also refers to Nondestructive Examinations which is used in other than process
control applications. NDI as Nondestructive Inspection and NDC as Nondestructive
Characterization. When using sensors to obtain data it is called Nondestructive Sensing (NDS).
NDE has various applications. The use of a method or procedure will depend on the
restrictions that applies at the circumstance in which the product is examined. Sometimes it is
needed to be inspected on-site, at real time with data processing in harsh environments. All this
factors will dictate what the inspector should have or use in order to acquire and analyze correct
data. Normal conditions of tests results can be: Accept or Reject. When rejected, a product can be
recycled when it is possible, reprocessed (happens at most at industries) and possible scrapped.
One of the main goals of NDE is to potentiate planned periodic maintenance (PPM) of a
component or final product. PPM is far more inexpensive than critical failures that stops a
production line for example. Safety-critical components like aircraft components instigated NDE
method to become more and more reliable and important to improve the safety and to reduce
costs involved in time of maintenance. NDE is composed by a series of different tests and
methods. One must choose among numerous tests the best fit for the inspection requirements.
The best fit looks to maximize the likelihood of detecting a failure or discontinuity at the
component always observing the economic, regulatory and standards criteria. Sometimes it is
impossible and unproductive to examine all the components. The inspector should be aware of
determine how much of NDE is enough and, sometimes, the inspector can use statistical methods
to conclude what is the overall condition of the product. However failure do detect a flaw can
bring some terrible consequences to safety-critical application such as aircraft components and
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power plants. Risk-informed methods focus on components that has a high risk based on the
probability of the component to fail. Sometimes a component can have it life extended due to
good conditions and properties despite of the end of the designed lifetime, therefore it may
increase the chance of critical failure of the specific component, so, there is the need of an
intensive continuously inspection schedule.
The reliability of NDE will depend on a set of factors, since human to external factors. It
is well known that any personal influences such as physical and mental attributes will determine
the quality and reliability of the inspection. The environmental conditions like cold, hot, and
windy situations may also vary the final result as well. Some of the commonly used Non
Destructive Testing are: Penetrant Testing, Magnetic Particle, Testing, Ultrasonic Testing, Eddy
Current Testing, and Radiographic Testing. This topics will be discussed as the classes are
presented.
With initial information about NDE, we can easily conclude that this method of
inspection is highly positive. NDE applications varies since productive centers from goods
industry raising productivity, decreasing production costs and improving product quality, and
extends to keeping the infrastructure safe and reliable for diverse needs. NDE presents a toolbox
of types and methods of examination that are going to be used to best fit the examination
conditions.