Industry & NDE 4.0 — The benefits from DLT and the IOTA protocol
Introduction
I will try to describe some DLT use cases in several articles, which may serve as an impetus to make people in different industries aware of this groundbreaking technology. Let’s start with a first look on a specific data scenario…
I would like to point out the synergy effects that arise when we are able to transfer, process and resell data obtained from various material testing methods with the help of Distributed Ledger Technology in a way that has never been possible before to provide quality and safety assurance of valuable assets.
Before we go in medias res, i would like to explain a few basic terms and circumstances we face in the world of non-destructive testing and why secure, verifiable and immutable data will become increasingly important in the future.
What is distributed ledger technology?
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is a consensus of a digital system for recording transactions of data, value or assets in which these transactions and their details are recorded in multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, distributed ledgers have no central data store or administration functionality. Their open approach is transparent and democratic and can create trust between parties where it’s needed. Cryptography is used to securely store data, cryptographic signatures and keys to allow access only to authorized users. The technology also creates an immutable database, which means information, once stored, cannot be deleted and any updates are permanently recorded for posterity.
This architecture represents a significant change in how information is gathered and communicated by moving record-keeping from a single, authoritative location to a decentralized system in which all relevant entities can view and modify the ledger. As a result, all other entities can see who is using and modifying the ledger. This transparency of DLT provides a high level of trust among the participants and practically eliminates the chance of fraudulent activities occurring in the ledger. As such, DLT removes the need for entities using the ledger to rely on a trusted central authority that controls the ledger, or an outside, third-party provider to perform that role and act as a check against manipulation.
Examples of DLT networks are blockchains like Bitcoin / Ethereum / Cardano, or DAG’s (directed acyclic graphs) like IOTA. All of these can vary between the consensus algorithm — proof of work, proof of stake, voting systems like IOTA’s coming OTVFPC (#1, #2) and so on.
What is non-destructive testing (NDT/NDE)?
Nondestructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and technology industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage. The terms nondestructive examination (NDE) and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.
Some well-known NDT-methods are radiographic (see below) & ultrasonic testing, which are capable of finding flaws in materials, even in some cases if they are in use (on-stream-inspection).
In most cases, safety-relevant components are tested. This forms the basis for assessing reusability or replacement. Depending on the safety level, several independent institutions (f.e. accredited testing laboratories, technical inspection associations, government authorities) must evaluate the results of the tests until the components are released again.
What is NDE 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, based on digitization, cross-linking and networks and lives on data for its feedback loops and one of its biggest and most valuable data sources is NDE. Industry 4.0 leads to an improved production and design by analyzing the data stored in digital twins and provided by the industrial internet of things. Measures like artificial intelligence, big data processing, or augmented reality allow to evaluate and visualize the data.
NDE 4.0 will become an important part of the entire digital supply chain. Starting with material certificates, through the entire production process with all its documentation (personnel qualifications, component tests, expert & authority certificates), to the use of the end product and its maintenance. One if not the most important goal of this era will be predictive maintenance, which will only be made possible by collecting all this data across multiple assets. So, NDE 4.0 will generate a lot of data from countless sources and need to be merged somewhere. But as we will see in a moment, important building blocks and technologies are still missing…
DICONDE and what is used in the NDT-world so far
Under the emerging aspects of digitization, which has also just begun in this industry sector, there is actually only one halfway usable standard that has found some acceptance. The DICONDE (Digital Imaging and Communication in Non-Destructive Evaluation) open data standard developed by ASTM International, which is based on a similar DICOM standard used within the medical industry. It is only used today in isolated solutions, usually only between a client and supplier. If more parties come together, you will encounter many problems that all other centralized systems like public key infrastructures (PKI) with Certificate Authorities (CAs) currently have:
- Signed data only proves that the data came from a specific trusted entity. It does not allow to prove when it was sent, nor whether you sent the same data to everyone. You could send a certain piece of information to one person and another piece of information to another person. Signatures alone will not protect anyone from such things.
- These solutions require a large infrastructure to manage and provision certificates. Moreover, each device must possess a client certificate to authenticate itself. Distribution of certificates for many devices is impractical, expensive, and nearly impossible especially in IoT networks. Furthermore, the current PKI/CA security system holds an inherent risk in the possibility of subverting a CA or having a rogue CA, shown in several hacks until today. The Certificate Authority is a classic single point of failure.
- All raw data is stored in a centralized database and with that all alterations with records of revisions. Since no hashes of raw data or changes can be stored in a tamper-proof and decentralized manner, no ultimate proof of authenticity exists.
- In general, IoT devices today come with preinstalled software that aims to lock users, both B2C and B2B, into an ecosystem and keep them there.
Taking into account these four conditions, there is no trusted permissionless network over which multiple parties can exchange, process and make decisions based on trusted data. Direct payment of services are not possible at present and technical authorities who perform the supervising function in legally regulated sectors are left out because of the lack of interoperability and trust.
Exemplary case study: Chemical site availability and efficiency
In legally regulated sectors in particular, there are a large number of on-stream inspections of large chemical plants, so-called weak point programs, in order to know how long a plant can still be operated safely before it has to be inspected & maintained. Especially in chemical industries, pipings are subject to extreme stress due to high pressures, high temperatures and the nature of the media. Therefore, the maintenance of such piping systems is mandatory, but unfortunately also a complicated and expensive task for operators and the responsible maintenance. At present, attempts are being made to use the integral inspection concept for the periodic inspection to extend the inspection period and downtime in coordination with the approved inspection body and authorities:
One of the aspects are corrosive material erosion or cracks in inaccessible areas that have developed or are in the process of developing must be detected and checked. Defects, however, must be located and evaluated early and accurately with reasonable effort. This is important not only with regard to the availability of the affected facilities, but also in particular to minimize liability for environmental damage as a result of leakage or to comply with statutory operator obligations.
For finding those flaws one of a solution is ultrasonic testing. It is capable to examine walls of the pipe systems to detect corrosive wall erosion.
The so-called CORRFINDER™ testing system — developed by the company ZWP Anlagenrevision GmbH(associated with TÜV Saarland) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Non-Destructive Testing IZFP — is one example for automatic UT-testing:
Explained in short: A test array consisting of ultrasonic transmitters and receivers is attached to the pipe wall. Ultrasonic waves in the pipe wall spreads as an impulse in one direction and detects the entire wall thickness. If there is corrosive wall erosion — either on the inside or outside — in the direction of testing, part of the ultrasonic energy is reflected back to the probe. This reflections have to be evaluated.
(These techniques are first attempts in the direction of component monitoring. Industry experts will know that there are of course still problems to be solved until the optimum state is reached — coupling at high temperatures, sufficient defect resolution, etc.)
Of course, there are other interesting methods like ongoing vibration and acoustic analyses of pumps, valves and reactor vessels with smart sensors. (maybe i write another article especially on that one, very interesting topic!)
From all this data, people have so far been able to form a picture of the overall condition of a production facility resulting in only binary decisions.
And this is exactly where the opportunity exists to achieve higher efficiency and plant availability by means of digital twins, artificial intelligence and the resulting automatic plant control.
Quite simply, a digital twin is a virtual model of a process, product or service. This pairing of the virtual and physical worlds allows analysis of data and monitoring of systems to head off problems before they even occur, prevent downtime, develop new opportunities and even plan for the future by using simulations.
But how does data get into digital twins / AI and back without having to fear that they have been altered or manipulated? This is when the new distributed ledger technology and in particular the IOTA protocol could come in…
IOTA DLT as an intermediary between data publishers and receivers
What is IOTA?
The IOTA communication protocol provides a scalable, open source and permissionless solution with tokens (cryptocurrency) used for data AND value transactions. The IOTA Foundation, founded and located under german law in Berlin, provides and organize the development of the so called “digital trust layer for the Internet of Things/Everything” (IoT/IoE). The “tangle” is IOTA’s centerpiece, which makes it possible for f.e. IoT-devices to exchange data and value temper-proof , immutable and — in contrary to any other DLT/Blockchain — without network fees.
We’ve learned: IOTA ist not a blockchain. It is a DAG and different in several ways…
- No miners: removes the fluctuating fees charged by miners, as well as their ability to block small transactions
- Instead of a “block chain”, transactions are carried out on the tangle, the more transactions are executed, the faster they become
- Currently, around 1000 TPS (transactions per second) are possible — instead of 7 with Bitcoin.
- The low computing power required makes IOTA currently one of the green cryptocurrencies and capeable to use the smallest IoT-devices
Network fees for transactions (like bitcoin, ethereum/gas) are one of the biggest blockers for business DLT/blockchain use cases, just because no company in the world would bear the uncertainty of the costs for tens of millions of transactions.
I don’t want to go into more details as this would go far beyond the scope here. Below this article you can finde a small collection of links for those who want to go a little deeper into the underlying techniques of IOTA…
What is IOTA STREAMS?
IOTA STREAMS is an organizational tool for structuring and navigating secure data through the Tangle. Streams organizes data by ordering it in a uniform and interoperable structure. It brings granular data access and sharing to connected devices and other IoT integrations. In essence, it gives data producers fine-grained control over who can access the data that they produce; whether from a mobile device, environment IoT sensor, connected vehicle, Industrial IoT solution, or something else.
Back to our case study, how does the whole process look like using IOTA?
Let us now imagine that we have CORRFINDER systems distributed at neuralgic points throughout the plant, and that these systems are continuously acquiring data on wall thickness removal and corrosion.
In the chartflow shown above, CORRFINDER act as a “publisher”, the AI and the automatic plant control as “subscribers”.
Data from each individual measuring point can now be sent via IOTA STREAMS to an AI, which can not only operated internally but can also be purchased externally. These data packages are interpreted with the help of deep learning methods and based on the results decisions are made. In form of specific control commands, these valuable informations are transferred back to the automatic plant control system via the same path. With regard to our case study, a more economical control of the plant can be achieved on the basis of the actual corrosion rate, which can lead to longer revision cycles and thus higher plant availability.
This NDE 4.0/DLT example would be particularly charming if external AI were purchased. Here, you can pay for the artificial intelligence services, maybe from different providers each for specific tasks, directly via micro transactions using the IOTA DLT and its native token. One step further… smart contracts will make it possible in the near future to make a fully automatic accounting and billing system between machines possible, without compulsory interaction of humans (Machine-to-Machine M2M).
(Reminder: this case study is just simple exemplary example. Of course, in reality it would depend on many other factors.)
Summary
So what’s the bottom line to all this from the point of view of benefits:
- Waiting until data reaches the cloud introduces many security risks, including risks of data theft, manipulation and single points of failure. IOTA is able to eliminates these disadvantages and secure & structure data on the device itself.
- “Own your own data”- breaking down the data silos: Opening up the possibility of reselling the data collected for self purposes in a controlled manner
- Improving data quality, analysis and real time decision making for use in artificial intelligence
- Improving monitoring & control of ecosystems and making trusted environmental metrics available in real time for automatic process controls never possible before
- High interoperability of data, standards, clients, customers, suppliers, authorities
- Machine-to-Machine M2M accounting and payment with the accompanying avoidance of expensive middle men
- Strengthened business transparency & increasing business efficiency
- Improving regulatory compliance and certifications, auditability, immutability and trust
It can be said that if IOTA makes its full decentralized ambitions possible, planned around the beginning of 2022 (an executable version of “coordicide” is already running at the IOTA devnet 2.0), then it can quickly become the “TCP/IP” of the IoT world. Some thoughts about such use cases are definitely worth about and the developing of some proof of concepts, so that there is no danger of missing out on important developments. The areas of application are then almost unlimited.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything — George Bernard Shaw
Thank you for your kind attention.
(Next up: Tamper-proof NDT records and documents as part of the supply chain and a digital twin of a component through its entire lifecycle. Back referencable and usable by any authorized entity)
IOTA DLT link collection:
- IOTA Foundation — the official virtual home of the IF
- IOTA Einsteiger Guide — by schmucklos, the best compendium online
- IOTA Beginner’s Guide — english version
- IOTA Archive, publications / academic papers / patents
- IOTA Mainnet Visualizer — see the “tangle” in live action
- IOTA Cafe — research discussion forum
