Hello and good afternoon everyone, my names Devin and I am a student at a Technical Institute located in South Dakota. We are using the AWS D1.1 2015 code book in my code book class. My question is, what NDT method is mostly commonly used and mostly recommended out of UT, RT, and Dye Penetrant in the manufacturing community?
I'm sure you will get some much better and more detailed replies to this question; the short answer is (in my humble opinion) that there is no "most commonly or mostly recommended" form of NDT. It all depends on what type of materials you are working with, what type of discontinuities you are looking for, cost and availability can be a factor...the list goes on and on.
In my industry (manufacturing and installing ski lifts), we use MT more than anything else, followed by UT.
Thank you for your response. You said that the company you work for uses MT before UT. Why not use UT for all of it instead of using both?
Again, it depends on what discontinuities you are looking for. MT will detect surface (and some sub-surface) cracks in finished welds, which is what we use it for. But it won't show you anything past a couple of mm deep. Now UT, on the other hand, will detect discontinuities through the entire thickness of the material, but probably wouldn't pick up the surface cracks (at least not to where you would know what you were seeing).
Different NDT methods for different applications; there is no "one size fits all".
In structural steel, UT and MT is pretty common, not sure how much PT comes in to play.
Bridge, RT, UT and MT are the main methods utilized, with some DOTs now requiring some PT as well.
I don't have a ton of experience working the pipe trades, but the bit I've seen, RT and PT are major ones with PAUT also becoming commonplace.
Often looking through the various code books will give you the methods that are most common for each of the codes.
Thank you I will differently be looking through my code book more to see what else it has to tell me on this subject. I appreciate you taking your time to reply to my question.
Hello Devin,
Welcome to the Original AWS Welding Forum.
I think PT (Dye Penetrant) is most commonly used.
As already stated, lots of factors go into determining which NDT process to use. Different weldments may have different quality requirements.
I believe it is directly related to public safety. Anything that may harm people, (and correctly so), will be scrutinized more carefully with one or more of the methods you listed.
Simple non load bearing welds will probably just be subjected to visual or PT. I believe this is the majority of manufacturing shops.
Super critical welds, that may cause damage/loss of life if it fails, will be RT, UT, VT and PT.
Tyrone
Thank you I appreciate the response and the information you have given me.
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