TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 856/2006
By B W Kenzie
Background
The work in this report was carried out within the European Community 'TOFDPROOF' project GRD1-2001-40106 funded by the 'Competitive and Sustainable Growth' Programme. The Institut de Soudure led the TOFDPROOF project and TWI was one of the partners. Additional financial support to TWI was provided through Core Research Programme projects 0101-12 and 0401-17. A first report CRP report (805/2004) on TOFDPROOF was produced and distributed to TWI Industrial Members in 2004. This second report provides Members with information about the work that TWI has undertaken since the first report.
The primary aim of TOFDPROOF is to develop and promote the effective industrial application of the Time-of-Flight Diffraction (TOFD) technique, a non-destructive testing (NDT) technique using the diffraction of ultrasonic waves to detect and size flaws in materials, especially welds. A lack of appropriate European standards, in particular for acceptance criteria, and agreed operator training/certification requirements, have hindered the application of TOFD as a routine NDT technique for weld inspection. More specifically, the TOFDPROOF project aims to make recommendations to European standards (CEN) for applications including the manufacture of unfired pressure vessels according to EN 13445.
Objectives
The objectives of the work covered in this report are:
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To provide recommendations for applying TOFD, including the assessment of a recommended TOFD procedure
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To provide guidelines for training and certification of TOFD operators.
While reference is made to draft TOFD acceptance criteria for consideration by CEN, these were addressed more fully in the first report (805/2004)