Magnetic Particle Testing in Aviation & Aerospace: What It Finds, What It Misses, and What Governs It
What MT is actually used for in aviation & aerospace
Landing gear and engine components in martensitic steels are magnetic particle territory — high-strength parts where grinding cracks and fatigue must be found at overhaul.
How MT works
MT magnetises a ferromagnetic component and applies iron particles, which gather at the flux leakage a surface-breaking or near-surface discontinuity creates. It is fast, inexpensive per square metre, and unusually good at what it does: finding cracks in steel that a visual examination would miss.
What MT will not do
What MT will not do: work on non-magnetic material at all — no stainless austenitics, no aluminium, no nickel alloys — and it finds nothing meaningfully below the surface. Coatings degrade sensitivity, and flaws parallel to the flux direction are invisible, which is why examination in two directions is standard practice rather than diligence.
The aviation & aerospace assets this applies to
Airframe structure and fastener rows, engine hardware — discs, blades, cases — landing gear, wheels, and the growing composite content on both structure and control surfaces.
The damage mechanisms driving the examination
Fatigue cracking at stress concentrations is the mechanism the entire inspection programme exists to catch, with corrosion in structure, disbonds in composite repairs, and thermal damage in hot sections.
What governs acceptance
NAS 410 or EN 4179 for personnel with a named responsible Level 3; Nadcap accrediting the process; FAA Part 145 governing the repair station; OEM maintenance manuals supplying acceptance criteria rather than a code. On the method side: ASME Section V Article 7; AWS D1.1 for structural work; ASTM E1444 in aerospace and general industry; ASTM E709 as the practice reference. An examination that is technically sound but performed outside the governing regime is not an examination anyone will accept, which is why the code family matters as much as the technique.
How Atlantis delivers MT in this sector
Atlantis mobilises examination teams to your site under Atlantis procedures with ASNT Level III oversight — we do not claim a depot or laboratory in every market, and say so plainly. What you receive is the examination performed to a qualified procedure, findings evaluated against the acceptance criteria your contract names, and records structured to survive a client audit years later.
Magnetic Particle Testing services · MT training and certification · Aviation & Aerospace programme consulting · Aviation & Aerospace NDT training · scope a MT examination.
MT in other sectors
Refining · Petrochemical · LNG · Offshore · Pipeline · Marine & Shipbuilding.