ABSTRACT

The engineer is under increasingly severe pressure to produce reliable and safe designs for structures and equipment with the added constraint that they must compete economically in the world market. To accomplish this, a designer must have confidence in the materials that are used and full knowledge of the likely service environment that will be encountered. In the final analysis, however, the design engineer has come to “expect the unexpected.” Nondestructive evaluation plays a key role in minimizing the effects of the unexpected load condition or material property.