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| Collaboration >> |
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| International Collaboration |
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IITM is a founding member of the World Federation of NDE Centres that is located in Ames, Iowa, USA (www.wfndec.org). Through this forum, the CNDE participates in its annual technical meetings involving members from more than 20 countries, and the associated conferences on Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation. The CNDE also has student exchange programs with Iowa State University, Michigan State University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Cincinatti in the USA and Imperial College in UK, Fraunhoffer Institute for NDT, and BAM in Germany. Over the past 4 years, more than 20 students have been involved. The Centre also participated in the organization of the Advanced NDE conference held in 2005 at South Korea. |
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The fundamental and applied research capabilities of CNDE have been well recognized in the international forum. The CNDE has been continuously funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in the area of Residual Stress Gradient Measurement and NDE Data Fusion Algorithm Development over the past 4 years. This interaction has led to the development of fundamental understanding on the inverse methods for the analysis of measured NDE data |
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The measurement of viscosity of molten glass is often considered critical, particularly in industries that make glass products such as fiber optics, computer monitor, etc. The measurements have to be made at extremely high temperatures. Through a joint effort between Corning Inc., NY, USA and the CNDE, a method for the measurement of viscosity of molten glass at temperatures up to 1500 C is being developed. |
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| Industry Projects |
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Several ongoing projects involve close collaboration with the Indian industries in providing solution to specific needs of the industry. For instance, in the Indian refineries, the monitoring of pipelines in process industries is essential as they are more prone to corrosion, particularly at the support locations between the pipe and the support sleepers. The current technology used by some of the leading international refineries for the inspection of corrosion at the pipe support regions is not accessible to the Indian Refineries. CNDE in collaboration with Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), Mumbai, has recently developed a Cylindrical Guided Wave Ultrasonic Instrument for the inspection and imaging of such regions and has tested them at the refinery. The technology developed by CNDE is an improvement over the technology used by international refineries by providing a faster rate of inspection and improved imaging of the corrosion, as shown in Fig. 3. |
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In association with General Electric JFWTC and GE Medical Systems, Bangalore, advanced research in the area of Nonlinear Ultrasonic Techniques from the characterization of material microstructure, and New Imaging techniques for the micro-and nano-imaging are being developed. |
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Indigenisation Ventures |
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Through an MOU between IITM and Mahindra Intertrade, the indigenous development of Ultrasonic C-Scan systems has resulted in significant cost savings and improved productivity in Indian industries. The imported C-scan imaging systems are extremely expensive and hence were not cost effective for industrial implementation. Through the collaboration, several C-scan systems have been developed and installed at organizations such as Tata Steel, National Metallurgical Laboratory, and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. |
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The Ultrasonic Immersion C-Scan System is a joint industry-university development between Mahindra Intertrade, Mumbai and the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. The C-scan system provides the industry with a sophisticated tool for the quantitative imaging of the internal material state of components and test samples. The internal structural information may comprise of sub-surface damage during service for life extension and remaining life prediction as well as the characterization of defects such as cracks, inclusions, porosity, etc., during
production for quality monitoring. This system can be used in a range of material systems like metals, ceramics and composites. Additionally, the images of samples are also employed in the R&D departments for improving the manufacturing process, measuring the material properties, and failure analysis. |
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The Ultrasonic C-scan system is a total integration of domain knowledge in the fields of Nondestructive Evaluation, Ultrasound Physics, Sensor Technology, Robotics, Mechanical Design, Electronics and Instrumentation, Data and Image Processing, Statistical Interpretation, and Computer Graphics. Hence, this technology, while popular in western countries, was only available at a few select large organisations in India and the technology was all imported and prohibitively expensive. Additionally, the complex nature of the system meant that the failure of any one part of the system leads to a long downtime. Also, the software and the data interpretation and reporting modules could not be customized leading to limitations in the application of the technology to specific needs of the industries in India. |
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The indigenous development of the C-scan system by the Mahindra Intertrade – IITM team had resulted in customized serviceable C-scan systems available to Indian industries at low costs (significant foreign exchange savings) and virtually no-downtime. The software and the hardware are customized to the requirements of the customers and hands-on training is provided at the customer site. |
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At Tata Steel R&D, this system (see Figure 4) is currently used for the optimization of steel processing. The system can image at various cross-sections of the steel ingot samples the (a) quantitative level of inclusions of 50 microns and above, (b) The presence of defects such as porosity, and (c) the grain structure variations. Two typical results are provided below in figure 5 (a, and b). The Figure 5a shows the imaging of inclusions while Figure 5b shows the imaging of the grain structure variation from the outside surface (that is rapidly cooled) to the inside of the ingot where the cooling process is slow. |
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In HAL, this system is used for the imaging of aircraft structures and for obtaining the information regarding (a) presence of defects during fabrication, (b) characterizing the extent of damage during operation of the aircraft, (c) the integrity of any repairs on these structure when damaged, and (d) the image of the fiber lay-up in a multi-layered composite material system. The C-scan image in Figure 6 shows the defects at different layers of a composite component |
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