How to meet the requirements of Nondestructive Testing in Turbine Field Service

The world-wide high power requirement requires a constant availability of the power stations. In order to ensure this high availability, an efficient outage management process is necessary. Effective outage performance requires the optimized planning of all outage- activities as well as modern non destructive examination methods, in order to examine the highly stressed components (turbine, valves, generator) reliably and in short periods of access. This paper describes, under which criteria non destructive inspection techniques are developed for service examinations and when they should be applied. In addition is also describes how the technical ability of the personnel to operate modern NDT equipment under onsite- conditions is optimized by a systematic qualification and training process.