Maintenance and Materials Testing

In the area of maintenance and materials testing, our experts at TÜV Rheinland can support you with integrated solutions designed to assess the condition of your plants and equipment. They also recommend preventive action to minimize risk. We offer you comprehensive advice, professional materials testing, precise failure analyses, and detailed expert reports – all to enhance the quality of your products. We work together with you to enhance the availability, safety, and profitability of your plants and equipment.

Services for maintenance and materials testing from TÜV Rheinland help you:

• Enhance your legal security and reduce liability claims
• Take advantage of our many years of industrial experience
• Maintain and enhance your quality standards through fast, precise investigation results
• Reliably determine the root causes of failure and identify responsibility in the event of loss or damage

• Radiographic testing
• Manual ultrasonic test methods, such as wall thickness measurement and crack testing
• Automated ultrasonic test processes, such as P-scan, phased array , Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT) and Time of Flight Diffraction (TOFD)
• Surface-crack testing using color penetration and magnetic powder methods
• Mechanized tank bottom inspection and magnetic flux scanning
• Potential probe testing for crack depth measurement
• Noise emission analysis, especially on pressure vessels
• Visual inspections and endoscopy
• Inspections to locate leaks

• Tensile tests
• Impact tests
• Folding and bending tests
• Creep tests
• Hardness tests

• Corrosion resistance testing
• Development of corrosion control concepts
• Analysis of corrosion damage

• Physical testing
• Electrical and chemical testing

• Analysis and evaluation of production- and operation-related effects on material structure using macro- and micro-sections
• Analysis of fracture surfaces, enclosures, and deposits using light-optical methods, electron microscopy, and an energy-dispersive X-ray micro-probe
• Determination of the type and cause of fractures
• Evaluation of microstructures in-situ using portable metallography replica methods

Resistance and capacitance foil strain gages in all temperature ranges to determine single-axis or 2-axis strain conditions

When a crack is found in a component, the component does not always need to be replaced immediately. We assess whether the crack will remain stable or continue to grow, and whether the component can continue to be operated safely despite the crack, for example, with the help of fracture mechanics.