Structural Integrity Design and Validation Technologies conference: 60 Seconds with Thomas Barber, BAE Systems

With less than two weeks to go before the Institution’s Structural Integrity Design and Validation Technologies conference, taking place on 27-28 February 2018 in Manchester, we spoke with Thomas Barber, Senior Engineer of Materials Technology at BAE Systems

In his conference session, Thomas will be outlining the opportunities of ultrasonic testing in lieu of radiography for submarine inspections, together with some of the specific challenges that BAE Systems are facing with regulations and acceptance criteria.

Q: Could you briefly explain your role and involvement in structural integrity assessment and/or NDT?
Thomas Barber [TB]: I facilitate the adoption and development of new NDE processes to improve workplace safety and to minimise the cost and schedule impact of NDE to the fabrication of our submarines.

Q: What is the number one challenge for those using or benefitting from these technologies in today’s current market?
TB: Engineering standards are slow to adapt to the availability and capability new technologies.  Consequently these new technologies are often required to conform to standards that are not written with them in mind as such the full potential of these technologies is not realised.

Q: What is the most exciting development in this field at the moment, either within your company or in the industry in general?
TB: Remotely installed permanent monitoring systems; the ability to measure structural properties of a component in-situ and collect and analyse orders of magnitude more data. This combined with the development of high-temperature or non-contact sensor systems is a big step towards robust predictive maintenance processes for high value engineering plant.

Q: Where do you see the future of NDT applications and approaches to structural integrity assessment going over the next 5 – 10 years?
TB: From an NDT perspective I see more permanent monitoring inspection solutions that will be applied. I think there will be a strong push to bring the NDE and structural integrity communities’ closer together to better understand the current capabilities and limitations of processes used in each field. A hopeful result would be a move towards updated codes where more flaw acceptance criteria are based on fracture mechanics principles and knowledge of Probability of Detection (PoD) curves.

Q: What are you most looking forward to by attending and presenting at Structural Integrity Design and Validation Technologies 2018?
TB: It’s a great chance to meet with peers in other industries and learn about their challenges, opportunities and capabilities.

The two day conference will bring together experts from across the field of Non Destructive Testing (NDT), structural integrity, operations and maintenance. Attendees will gain an in-depth understanding of NDT in context of different applications through various cross industry case studies, including Oil & Gas, Power and Rail. Join to learn about new and existing techniques, NDT reliability and validation, as well as real time monitoring solutions for hazardous environments or equipment that is difficult to take out of service.