TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 495/1994
By C I K Sinclair
Background
The current British Standard covering the automated ultrasonic testing (UT) of welds, issued in 1972, is so out of date as to be very little practice use.
In 1988, the then CEGB submitted a draft document to the relevant British Standards Institution (BSI) committee in which a replacement was proposed. By 1991 it was clear that the CEGB proposal was not going to be taken up.
In May of 1991, TWI submitted a framework, which has evolved since then to encompass the comments and requirements of the relevant BSI committee.
In August 1993, it was reported that the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) had adopted a new work item for the automatic ultrasonic examination of welds in metallic materials. This effectively meant that BSI could not continue to create a replacement British Standard. It can however, put forward any documents it is working with to CEN as the UK's proposal for such a standard.