As a means of ensuring safety, quality, reliability and cost-effective maintenance, nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT /NDE) has been paid greater attention than ever in materials, design, manufacturing, civil, aerospace, mechanical, and energy industry. There is no associated course offered by MAE to prepare undergraduate students for their career in NDT /NDE. In this new undergraduate NDT/NDE course, both fundamentals of NDT/NDE and lab modules will be taught so that interested students can be knowledgeable about NDT /NDE techniques and gain some hands-on experiences to meet the immediate need of NDT /NDE skills in industry across the world. A final project will offer students a opportunity to look closely at the research and industrial NDT/NDE problems and the possible solutions. Specific goals of the NDT/NDE course are for students to:
• Understand the fundamentals of NDT/NDE techniques through hands-on experiments and real-time observations;
• Be familiar with and able to use key NDT/NDE instrumentation and techniques;
• Experience NDT /NDE research through problem-based learning in the final projects;
• Be prepared for pursuing advanced degree and/ or NDT /NDE-related industrial career.
As a special topic course (MAE 495), the NDT/NDE course was firstly offered in fall2013 with the grant support from American Society of Non-destructive Testing (ASNT). The course was offered again as MAE 495 in fall2015. The enrollment number for 2013 and 2014 were 11 students and 15 students, respectively. Inspired by the very positive feedbacks received from students who took MAE 495 NDT /NDE course, I am convinced that NDT /NDE course should be offered as a regular elective course at MAE.