Contact-based Nondestructive Testing (NDT) at Height with Aerial Robotics (Drone)

By Bob Dahlstrom, Jamie Branch

To take nondestructive testing (NDT)  measurements at height, equipment such as aerial lifts, scaffolding, ladders, or other solutions are required to reach areas on ships, bridges, aboveground storage tanks, flare stacks, and other infrastructure and industrial sites. This is both dangerous, due to the possibility of falls, and time consuming. In certain instances, it may also require taking an asset, such as a flare stack, offline so it can be accessed to take NDT readings.

Handheld digital testing devices are traditionally used to perform NDT inspections of material surfaces, with the inspector physically accessing all test sites to obtain a measurement. Utilizing an aerial robotics platform for contact-based NDT measurements such as dry film thickness (DFT), surface pro-file (SP), or ultrasonic testing (UT) allows workers to remain safely on the ground while the device performs measurements at elevation.

Figure 1 demonstrates how the pilot/inspector remains at ground level, while the aircraft approaches a ship for DFT measurements. In addition to being safer, the aerial robotic NDT measurement process can be faster due to the job no longer requiring access equipment and the manual intensity of a human measuring every inspection area.