Knowledge jigsaw

It is amazing how something that appears simple on the surface often hides a level of complexity that only becomes apparent when you take the time to delve into it. I have said this before, but it is worth repeating. Thermal power generation is a simple concept: heat water to steam in steel components and use the energy of the steam to move a conductor through a magnetic field. Water is a simple molecule. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, both of which are simple atoms. The basic technology has been around a long time, but today we still have to address challenges around corrosion, fatigue and water chemistry, to name a few. This is in part because the technology has been continually developed to address issues and to improve efficiency, leading to increased complexity, which in turn throws up unpredicted new challenges.

I was reminded of this when I visited a lighthouse that had a small museum attached. On the face of it, a lighthouse is a simple concept: a tower with a light on top that warns shipping of dangerous waters and rocks. A museum poster stated that initially open-air fires were used, then protected oil-burning lamps, leading to lanterns encased in glass. These were placed on stone towers and later metal ones. The poster went on to relate the continued development of burning devices and sources of fuel in the lanterns, the regulation of the burning, the use of reflectors and the introduction of clock mechanisms. The introductory poster at the entrance to the Santa Maria lighthouse museum states that from Alexandria to the present, “…lighthouses have evolved in keeping with the advances made in different branches of knowledge, ranging from architecture to engineering, from hydrographics to physics, and from mechanics to electronics”. It goes on to say that they have been locations of experimentation and technological innovation.

I have seen many lighthouses and never once did I think of what the museum calls the ‘symbiosis’ of knowledge needed in their construction. Yet reading the posters in the museum not only awakened me to the complexity of a light on a stick, but also struck a chord. One of the reasons I have enjoyed working in the non-destructive testing (NDT) profession is the requirement to fuse together a whole number of different disciplines. Just like lighthouses, on the face of it NDT is simple: you spray dye, clean it off, spray developer and, hey presto, job done. This is similar for magnetic particle inspection and ultrasonics. Radiography has more of a barrier due to the health and safety implications. Dig deeper and you encounter that the successful application of the ‘simple’ NDT methods encompasses the physics of the techniques, the chemistry of the consumables, materials behaviour, the impact of the environment, access and human factors (psychology and communication) and the morphology of the defects requiring detection.

Widen the net a bit more and consider the reason for the inspection and the importance of the results: awareness of such disciplines as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, structural integrity and asset management is required.

Automated inspections demand inputs from robotics, computing, signal processing and imaging, while the design and assessment of the capability of inspections requires computer-aided design, mathematical modelling, experiment design and statistics. This is quite a quilt of disciplines – and I have still not brought us up-to-date. Permanently installed sensors and structural health monitoring, the need to inspect new materials, the continued advances in the technology of hardware and software and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence further increase the knowledge demand.

No one person can be expected to have competency in such a variety of disciplines, but it does illustrate the myriad of paths that can be pursued within a career in NDT, where today’s engineers need the ability and ingenuity to piece together the knowledge jigsaw required for the successful implementation of any particular solution.

Meanwhile, I will be looking at lighthouses in a totally new light.

Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within NDT News. They do not represent the views of Jacobs or BINDT.

Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Midsummer House, Riverside Way, Bedford Road, Northampton NN1 5NX, UK. Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at bernard.mcgrath1@jacobs.com

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