Radiographic Testing in Aviation & Aerospace: What It Finds, What It Misses, and What Governs It
What RT is actually used for in aviation & aerospace
Aircraft radiography examines castings, honeycomb water ingress and closed structure where disassembly is uneconomic, under NAS 410 / EN 4179 personnel requirements.
How RT works
Radiography passes X-rays or gamma radiation through the component onto film or a digital detector. Density differences in the image reveal what the material contains — porosity, slag, lack of fusion, and the internal geometry of a weld — producing the one thing no other method gives: a permanent, reviewable image of the volume examined.
What RT will not do
What RT will not do reliably: find tight planar defects lying perpendicular to the beam, because a crack with no measurable width casts almost no shadow. It also requires access to both sides, controlled radiation areas that shut down surrounding work, and licensed sources — which is why RT is scheduled around the plant rather than the plant around RT.
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 Articles 2 and 22 for technique; ASME Section VIII and B31.3 for acceptance; API 1104 for pipeline girth welds; ISO 17636 in international scopes. 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 RT 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.
Radiographic Testing services · RT training and certification · Aviation & Aerospace programme consulting · Aviation & Aerospace NDT training · scope a RT examination.
RT in other sectors
Refining · Petrochemical · LNG · Offshore · Pipeline · Marine & Shipbuilding.