The nondestructive evaluation of materials and components in a range of industries is crucial to maintaining quality control upon manufacture and to carry out inspection in service to maintain safe and economical operation. While nondestructive evaluation is of central importance to the transport, infrastructure, and energy sectors, it also reaches deep into a plethora of other industries, including semiconductor manufacturing, plastics, ceramics, paper and fibre products, glass, and wood. The nondestructive evaluation area brings together expertise in physics, chemistry, and various engineering fields, and has a set of standard approaches widely applicable to large classes of materials and structures as well as more specialized approaches targeted to specific applications. For the former, work-horse techniques include ultrasonic imaging, x-ray imaging and tomography, thermography, and infrared imaging. A technique of growing interest that is finding applications in the nondestructive evaluation of a range of electrically insulating materials is terahertz imaging, including terahertz time-of-flight tomography.

 

Link to Acoustics sub-site

Link to Terahertz sub-site