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Development of novel digital radiography technology; to facilitate the 'traditionally less research intensive inspection industry sector' change from manual film radiography to automated digital

Objective

The objectives of the FilmFree project are to make a number of technological advances that will take the digital industrial radiography sector into a new era to effectively replace film as the detecting media. SME's will play the major role in this devel opment and as a result they will make significant commercial gains and growth from the digital radiography market place both within Europe (estimated at 400million Euros annually) and globally (estimated at between 1bn and 1.25bn Euros pa). Medical digi tal radiography is totally unsuitable for industrial use because it cannot operate at the X-Ray energies required to examine engineering materials and metals, nor can it attain the image quality required to find the defects that could ultimately lead to the catastrophic failure of a safety critical component in service. The lower technology NDT (Non Destructive Testing) service inspection companies, are mainly SME's supplying labour intensive inspection services at low margins to traditional industries (e.g. engineering fabrication industry and the rail industry). There are about 2000 of these companies in Europe and they will benefit from the technology advances made in FilmFree by being able to upgrade their services to include digital radiography an d thereby gain access to higher value added sectors such as the petrochemical and oil & gas markets. Similarly the European higher technology digital radiographic equipment suppliers (SME's) will gain a competitive advantage over the small number of Large Enterprise companies that dominate the global market from the USA and Japan. An estimated 10,000 industrial radiographers are exposed to a high risk of radiation within Europe. FilmFree will significantly reduce the risks faced for the majority rad iographers. Also a minimum of 50% reduction in radiation exposure time is expected during the 25 million annual working hours of radiographers.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP6-2003-NMP-SME-3
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

NoE - Network of Excellence

Coordinator

TWI LIMITED
EU contribution
No data
Address
Granta Park, Great Abington
CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

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Total cost
No data

Participants (32)

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Last update: 15 December 2010

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/515746

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