Construction industry
In the construction industry, many types of structures are created using welding. And many of them because of their destiny require increased control in the form of non-destructive tests, like bridges, roads, viaducts, spectacular halls, stadiums. Most of the requirements as to the quality, scope and methods of non-destructive testing are set out in the PN-EN ISO 1090-2 standard. In accordance with the guidelines set out there, the building structures are subjected to ultrasonic tests of welded joints, which are part of volumetric tests and allow to determine whether the welded joint is free from internal incompatibilities such as cracks, inclusions, voids or sticking and very dangerous forgings. Other commonly used tests are magnetic-particle tests and visual examinations carried out to detect surface defects. In building constructions characterized by large dimensions and many elements, often performed in various places (production on an industrial hall, assembly of elements on the construction site), as well as various conditions (atmospheric precipitation, temperature changes during the whole assembly process), surface cracks already created can be found long after the production stage, and resulting from additional stresses occurring in welded joints as a result of matching subsequent elements of the structure. An additional risk for new construction structures is the desire of many investors to reduce production costs through so-called slimming construction, which also affects the need to perform reliable research at the stage of production, assembly, but also monitoring the condition of the structure during use, starting from even regular visual inspections of the main welded and twisted nodes, and ending with constant monitoring of structures based on different systems. Monitoring systems based on different methods and technologies form the field of our research.
In our work, we perform both production tests of welded joints as well as testing of assembly joints of new structures. We performed ultrasonic, magnetic-particle testing, visual inspection during construction and technical control of many bridge structures, spectator halls, sports halls, public buildings, electrical poles and industrial buildings.