Magnetic Particle Testing in Power Generation: What It Finds, What It Misses, and What Governs It
What MT is actually used for in power generation
Turbine components, boiler headers and structural welds take MT during outages — surface cracking at stub welds and attachment details is a known header mechanism.
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 power generation assets this applies to
Boilers and HRSGs, headers and steam piping, turbine rotors and blading, generators, condensers and feedwater heaters, and the structural steel around them.
The damage mechanisms driving the examination
Creep and thermal fatigue in high-temperature circuits, flow-accelerated corrosion in secondary systems, tube degradation in condensers and exchangers, and fatigue in rotating equipment.
What governs acceptance
ASME construction codes for pressure parts, Section XI where the plant is nuclear, and fleet-specific programmes that frequently add examination beyond code minimum. The outage window governs everything operationally. 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 · Power Generation programme consulting · Power Generation NDT training · scope a MT examination.
MT in other sectors
Refining · Petrochemical · LNG · Offshore · Pipeline · Marine & Shipbuilding.