Dr. Shant Kenderian earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2002, focusing on advanced non-destructive testing (NDT), which led to multiple U.S. and European patents. He played a key role in NASA’s response to the Columbia shuttle disaster as part of the Super Problem Resolution Team, developing inspection methods that contributed to the shuttle program’s return to flight. He later held senior engineering positions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The Aerospace Corporation, where he became Principal Scientist and led cutting-edge NDT work supporting the U.S. Air Force and Space Force. A Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT), Dr. Kenderian served six years on its board and chaired several committees and councils. He discovered a novel ultrasonic wave behavior, validated experimentally and theoretically. He has received over 30 awards, including ASNT’s Gold Medal and Innovation Award, NASA’s Engineering Excellence Award, and Aerospace’s Technical Excellence Award. Dr. Kenderian has authored 10 patents (three licensed), 31 journal papers, 21 conference proceedings, and 77 technical reports. He has also delivered seven keynote presentations and chaired 11 national and international conferences.
What is an NDT Engineer? How is his/her job different from that of a scientist or the expertise of an advanced NDT inspector? Three case studies will be discussed to show the difference between research, inspection and engineering. Where will the three practitioners overlap and what gaps exist between them. These roles can be demonstrated through a number of difficult case-studies taken from the space program, showing where each practitioner can contribute. The first case study discusses the inspection of rubber, evaluating the degradation mechanism, establishing an inspection metric and knowing what to do with it. The inspector can detect unbonds and cracks, but has no defined criteria to evaluate porosity and cavitation. The second case-study discusses the inspection of highly attenuating and inhomogeneous heatshield panels of the Orion Space Capsule. While the inspector is able to detect most defect types, kissing unbonds remain elusive even when the material is easy to inspect, let alone the hard to inspect heatshield material. The third case study discusses the detection of wrinkled composite fibers in a facesheet under a layer of bonded cork.