The KI Convention Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was the site for the 30^th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation July 27-August 1, 2003.  As is customary for this meeting, a broad scope of papers in all NDE technologies, ranging from measurement fundamentals to practical applications, was presented.  Twenty-one countries were represented including members of the World Federation of NDE Centers, a global federation aimed at promoting global cooperation in NDE education and research. 

Dr. Jean-Pierre Monchalin, Principal Research Officer at the Industrial Materials Institute of the National Research Council of Canada, Boucherville, Quebec, presented the keynote talk entitled “Laser ultrasonics:  From the Laboratory to Industry”.  Dr. Monchalin is a well-known leader in both the development of fundamentals of the new technology and its many applications.  In his talk, Dr. Monchalin reviewed the important principles of ultrasonic generation and detection, noting that the material being tested is actually the emitting transducer and that transduction is essentially noncontact due to the use of laser light coupling.  He also discussed the difficulties of the technique, but noted that in spite of these complexities, a number of applications in secure industrial environments has been developed that are reliable, cost-effective, and not possible with standard procedures.  He reviewed three of these covering an extremely broad range, namely, the broad coverage inspection of polymer matrix composites, the measurement of time lapses in microelectronics, and the rapid thickness in situ gauging of hot steel tubing in production.  Dr. Monchalin’s keynote demonstrated clearly that laser-ultrasonics has found its way from the laboratory to a sophisticated tool for difficult applications that can only be addressed by this noncontacted technology.

The second plenary session focused on two topics of importance in QNDE - renewal of interest in infrastructure problems and the continuing growth of new interests in structural health monitoring.  Professor John Popovics of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in his talk “Nondestructive Evaluation for Civil Engineering Structures and Materials,” provided an update on the first of these.  He defined several important inspection tasks that must be addressed in the broad field of civil engineering infrastructure.  He also described several NDE techniques that are applicable to these problems, offered a number of case studies of interest, and discussed future directions of NDE for civil structures in this huge field.  Professor F. K. Chang of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University provided the second talk of this session.  He focused on an emerging NDE area in his talk entitled “Structural Health Monitory:  Promise and Challenge.”  He described a future in which it is envisioned that structures will be made of multifunctional materials integrated with sensing and interpretive devices and systems.  Structural conditions will be monitored and remaining life will be predicted while the structures are in service.  Prof. Chang highlighted advanced and technical challenges in the three key areas − sensor devices, system integration/manufacturing, and intelligence algorithms/software.

The technical program that followed the plenary sessions consisted of both verbal and poster sessions.  Verbal sessions included both invited sessions that focused on specific subjects as sell as contributed sessions organized around a broader scope of subjects.  Invited verbal sessions included:  Eddy Current Arrays, Imaging, and Inversion; Structural Health Monitoring I; NDE for Civil Materials and Structures; Thermal Wave Imaging and Thermosonics; Laser Ultrasonics; Acoustic Emission; Ultrasonic Arrays and Applications and a special session on Benchmark Problems.  This latter special session was presented by members of the World Federation of NDE Centers in which results from different models in ultrasonics, eddy currents and magnetic flux on common problems are compared.  A lively Wednesday evening session was focused on sensors and their various applications in NDE.  This session carried through one of the themes set in the opening plenary sessions, i.e., structural health monitoring.

The student poster competition introduced into the Review this year was clearly one of the Review’s highlights.  Nineteen students entered the competition that was judged critically by seven internationally-known NDE researchers.  All students showed highly interesting results.  The three winners of the competition were Francesco Simonetti, UK RCNDE, Imperial College, England; Bao Mi, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia; and Roxana Hutanu, Queen's University, Canada.  This competition will become an annual event of the Review.

The Review is sponsored by QNDE Programs and hosted by the Center for Nondestructive at Iowa State University with support provided by the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT), the Ames Laboratory, US Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA-The Langley Research Center), and the National Science Foundations (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers.

Links:  QNDE 2004 and photos from QNDE 2003