Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies general rules for evaluating and expressing the reliability of non-destructive testing applications that can be used at various levels of accuracy and in many fields.

These application areas focus on non-destructive testing methods used for quality control and assurance in component production, as well as for evaluating the condition and life cycle of components.

This document is not applicable to sensor and inspection systems for structural health monitoring (SHM). This document provides general rules for evaluating and expressing test uncertainty and reliability assessments. This document does not provide detailed technology-specific instructions.

This document is not applicable to discussions of how the outcome and uncertainty of a particular evaluation result can be used for various purposes, e.g.

 - to draw conclusions about the compatibility of that result with other similar results,

- to set tolerance limits in a production process, or

 - to decide whether a particular procedure can be performed safely.

Note : In such cases, this document can be complementary to CEN/TR 14748, which defines arecommendations and general guidelines for carrying out qualification of non-destructive tests. While this document provides a methodological framework for reliability evaluation, CEN/TR 14748 focuses on the aspects of qualification, including team competence and documentation requirements.

Purpose

Since five decades the reliability of non-destructive testing application is an important issue for the community. While there were early some standards in the USA dedicated to the topic (MIL-HDBK-1823 and NASA-STD 5009), there is a lag in Europe for the standardized process of evaluating NDT-application. Even if it is required as in DIN EN 16991:2018 / BS 7910:2019. Due to the need for the assessments, different industries started their own standardisation approach for NDT (VDA 236-170 / VDA Vol5 / API 581). Even the different approaches to assess the capability / effectiveness / reliability lead to confusion and uncertainty.

This standard will end this confusion. Based on different case studies and different fields of expertise; the draft of this standard was developed to lead the evaluator through the process to get a useful metric describing his NDT application.

Based on the basic framework created by CEN / TR 14748:2004 including the newest developments in the assessment of the probability of detection and its link to necessary approaches to fulfil the evaluation of AI within NDT, this standard is up-to-date based on the international understanding of reliability based on the guide of the ICNDT SIG “NDT Reliability”.

The discussion during conferences like ASNT-Research 2024, WCNDT 2024 in Korea or the Sustainability through Science & Technology 2024 as well was on the 2rd International Conference on NDE 4.0 showed that the approach is valid and is needed in the modern community.

Despite the fact, that in the moment MIL-HDBK-1823A is momentarily the golden standard for the reliability evaluation, it is outdated and not easy to use, as well as focused on the aviation industry.

This new standard will include the newest approaches as mentioned in NASA STD 5009C as it will broaden the view into different industries like aviation, railway, oil and gas as well as civil engineering. It includes influencing factors like the human factors, organisational factors as well as factors from algorithms.