THE USE OF FRACTURE-MECHANICS METHODOLOGIES FOR NDT RESULTS EVALUATION AND COMPARISON

In the general frame of analysing the interactions amongst the informa tion from non destructive evaluation (NDE) and the methodologies to as sess the integrity of a defective structure (such as fracture mechanic s), the aim of the paper is to analyse and compare, in terms of indice s related to safety margins, NDE results from round robin testing tria ls to acheive assessments of capabilities and limitations. A structura l integrity/fracture mechanics approach for evaluating and comparing r esults from non destructive techniques is presented. Safety factors ca n be associated to flaws detected and characterized by inspections (es timated flaws) and to flaws actually present (reference flaws). The mi smatch between safety factors associated to estimated flaws and safety factors associated to reference flaws can be used to assess capabilit ies and limitations of procedures and techniques in use for inspection s. As an example, to show how the above procedure is applied and its p otential as a method of data evaluation and comparison, the NDE result s produced by the PISC (project for the inspection of steel components ) activity have been considered.