The Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) is a scientific-technological institute under the authority of the Federal Ministry of Economics. In accordance with a decree of the Federal Minister of Economics dates October 1, 1995 BAM promotes the development of German industry by carrying out research on materials and by further developing testing techniques and chemical safety engineering. The institute collects and makes the results of its own and others scientific work available to the general public in suitable form.
BAM's services are available upon request to associations, industry, consumer's associations as well as private applicants. It also advises ministries, courts and other authorities. The institute is obliged to be absolutely impartial and objective.
Currently BAM employs almost 1500 people of whom at least 520 are scientists from various technical disciplines and fields of natural science. They work in research and development, testing and investigation, in the field of consulting and information, and contribute to the different national and international standardisation institutions.
Department VIII "Materials Protection; Non-Destructive Testing" consists of nearly 125 people with about 80 of them working in the division for non-destructive testing (NDT). Most of them are scientists working on several NDT methods like radiography, ultrasonic testing, eddy current and computerised tomography. Additional groups cover general problems like reliability and combination of NDT methods and image processing as well as general software engineering for NDT data handling. These special groups were essential participants in several European projects of "EGKS-programme" (research program of the EC for coal and steel) e.g. dealing with automated interpretation of radiographs and the optimisation of real time X-ray techniques for automated evaluation in the steel industry.
Further BAM has been involved in different national and internal projects on NDT over several years including a pilot communication project called BERKOM and another project called Trendt on image data transfer and central image archives. Additionally, BAM was involved in a European project called Trappist to establish a standard environment for transfer, processing and interpretation of 3D NDT data. The institute offers several NDT methods as well as experience in image processing and interpretation, combination of NDT methods and reliability investigations using statistical methods.
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