When looking for land mines on a battlefield, almost is not good enough. Heat detectors work great, sometimes. And metal detectors work, when the mines are metallic. Ground penetrating radar works, when there aren't too many rocks. The Army has to be sure, so they use combined technologies on sophisticated mine detecting vehicles to reduce the chances of missing one.

Defects in FRP, like land mines, are notoriously hard to detect with traditional NDE methods because FRP is non-magnetic and inconsistent. Getting it right the first time requires the best available equipment and procedures and familiarity with the materials and methods of construction. All three legs of this process must agree before a repair-replace decision is made.

Ultrasonic: Full-featured UT flaw detector confirms and provides more detail about the laminate contents and the inside surface.

X-ray: Instant, pulsed digital x-ray quantifies the defect and confirms the condition of the corrosion barrier and need for repair. Learn more about our x-ray system…

The BRER NDE system produces different types of data that must be stored, including digital x-ray images with annotations, Ultrasonic wave-forms (In fiberglass, the whole wave tells a story so you don't want to just store the total thickness but the entire wave); digital photographs and written observations.

An effective PM system requires a place to readily store and retrieve this information. We find that data is best stored on or indexed to drawings. This makes it certain that the location is simple to document and is unlikely to be mis-recorded or lost.

We have combined several software platforms to achieve a simple-to-use and automated reporting system. The results are presented in Adobe Acrobat.

The result is organized from the summary to the details so that a busy plant engineer can use the data easily. It is fully linked for navigation and information is automatically indexed to the drawings.