Industry 4.0 is the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, based on digitalization, crosslinking, and networks and lives on data for its feedback loops, and one of its biggest and most valuable data sources are NDE. Industry 4.0 leads to improved production, design, and maintenance by analyzing the data stored in digital twins and provided by the industrial internet of things. Measures like artificial intelligence, big data processing, or augmented reality allow us to evaluate and visualize the data. Blockchains allow ensuring modification-proof storage and traceability and 5G the wireless connections needed by Industry 4.0.
This will lead to big changes in NDE. First, the Industry 4.0 emerging technologies can be used to enhance NDE technologies and NDE data processing. Second, a statistical analysis of NDE data provides insight into reliability, inspection performance, training status, consistency, and value of the inspections. Finally, NDE is the ideal data source for Industry 4.0.
This special issue presents the current hard and soft scientific views on all trends in NDE 4.0 and will contain multiple papers from the first conference on NDE 4.0. The first conference on NDE 4.0 is devoted to promoting a broad exchange on all subjects regarding NDE 4.0