A THEORY OF NONDESTRUCTIVE INSPECTION BASED ON FRACTURE-MECHANICS AND FRACTURE STATISTICS

The proof-test and non-destructive inspection (N.D.I.) are used to assure the reliability of structural ceramics. Especially, the proof-test has widely been applied to guarantee the safety of the structural materials. On the other hand, N.D.I. is not yet adopted independently, because of no available theoretical analysis. In this paper, the statistical theory and effective execution method of N.D.I. are presented. By calculating the flaw-size distributions for uni-axial tensile stress field after N.D.I., the effect of screening-size (d(p)) is analysed theoretically. It is concluded that the stress field in N.D.I. must be the same as the stress field in real loading.