CCSI, the Leader of NDT Technology in China

Reporter Li Xiaochuan

The application of nondestructive testing (NDT)has recently become prevalent in the yards and the project fields of offshore engineering in Dalian, Shanghai and Guangzhou. This prevalence spreads quickly. CCSI is the resolute pioneer and user of NDT new technology in the industry, and provides the industry with phased array ultrasonic testing(PAUT) technology, TOFD technology, and plays a leading role in the application of NDT new technology in shipbuilding, offshore engineering equipment manufacturing, etc.

When mentioning CCSI exploring the new technology,Ruan Haoyu, Deputy General Manager of CCSI and the person in charge of nondestructive testing said that all is due to hard work and at the same time some luck.During earlier period, CCSI has once tried to explore industry upgrading, and CCS has also tried the research and development of NDT new technology. Since late 2013, CCSI inherited CCS R&D achievement and set up the platform to transfer advanced scienti fi c research achievements gradually into application products,dedicating itself to providing higher quality services to the industry. However, there is a very big difference between the new technical service and the traditional technical service, and the promotion of a new product in the industry faces many problems. Thus, any luck in the market economy is with risk, and is the understanding of prospective market.

During the “twelfth fi ve-year” period, China"s economy has grown steadily, on one hand, China"s manufacturing industry has entered into an upgrading period, the market demand for nondestructive testing is on the rise; on the other hand, economic ability determines the quality of life, the public has higher demands for the environment,quality and safety, the market"s demand for new technology is becoming increasingly strong. At the same time, along with the potential opportunities brought by the state-owned enterprises going abroad, enterprises also expressed a desire to use new technology instead of the traditional one. To solve problems for the enterprises in the development, the appeal of the market puts forward technical tests for testing institutions.

However, compared with a handful of state-owned enterprises" urgent desire to use new technology, the general reaction of the market is often slower than the market demand. Thus, not many enterprises can perceive such prospective changes, and some enterprises follow the market, but they can do nothing subject to technical ability. At present, four major traditional nondestructive testing technologies (PT, MT, UT and RT) still dominate the market, but it is tangible that traditional NDT technology are constantly challenged by the NDT new technology, safe and reliable new technology will further penetrate into the traditional nondestructive testing fi eld in the future.

Compared with traditional technology, the new technology has obvious advantages such like accuracy,safety and efficiency. For example, compared with traditional radiographic testing (RT), PAUT opposite type has higher rate of defect detection, with no ionizing radiation damage, no safety inputs such as environmental assessment and monitoring, its detection efficiency can be 3～5 times of RT, at the same time weld crossover operation can be conducted around the detection and construction can be greatly speeded up.It can be seen that the new technology itself has been relatively mature, but the technology research and development and the design of auxiliary scanning device are dif fi cult for many testing institutions.

At the end of 2013, CCSI established NDT laboratory,forming technology service system on the basis of the laboratory research and development within CCSI.Combined with CCSI strong fi eld service ability, it can better solve some problems such as “man + machine”requirement posed by the new technology in completing testing program . In the first half of this year, CCSI adopted new technology and completed formulation and field experiments of the rack plate butt weld and fillet weld the detection scheme of Wai Gaoqiao, Shanghai,and got the customer approval.

Gao Yifei, Deputy Director of NDT laboratory of CCSI said that so far, the application of NDT new technology in ships and offshore engineering equipment is not much, and we need to actively promote and introduce more to customers. Of course, the industry also needs a process to accept new things, recent demand increased signi fi cantly than that in the past two years. Owing to the lack of relevant technical standards, in the application of NDT new technology in project test, CCSI needs to do a lot of comparison tests, and implement the model of per project per approval. So, in three years, the promotion of NDT technology road is not smooth, but CCSI has never wavered its belief in seeking technical breakthroughs in NDT market.