Patent Landscape on Non-destructive Testing in Gas Turbine Applications

Abstract

Patent analytics is a useful tool to derive insights from publicly available patent data and leverage it to organize the intellectual property (IP) strategy for an organization. The current study describes the use of Derwent Data Analyzer, a patent analytics tool commercialized by Clarivate Analytics. The tool is used to extract patent data on non-destructive testing (NDT) modalities applied to gas turbine applications including aviation, power generation among others for various industrial applications. Within the scope of search, it was observed that aviation players have relatively higher filings compared to the power industry players. Ultrasonic inspection has seen high filing focus with X-ray inspection and thermal imaging not far behind. However, the patent space for microwave and Terahertz inspection has also been expanding. A deep dive patent study is also conducted on X-ray Inspection related filings. Boeing and General Electric have filings across most of the technology segments while Safran has a relatively higher filing count on image processing techniques. Canon and Nikon also have good filing presence focusing on the X-ray scanning system. It is observed that aspects such as inspection data sharing across multiple systems, licensing among others have seen relatively lower focus and could present themselves as potential filing opportunities.There could also be potential opportunities in applying machine learning algorithms to analyze large inspection datasets. The study is a representative example of leveraging patent data towards shaping the innovation strategy of an organization.