Fitness for service assessments are conducted to assess the structural integrity of a component and its suitability for continuous service under the same or changing service conditions. Assessment procedures such as BS7910:2005, API 579, R6, or the European FITNET procedure enable the integrity of critical components and welded structures to be assessed. These procedures allow the significance of cracks and other flaws such as material loss due to corrosion in structural components and welded fabrications to be evaluated using different failure modes.
The methods can be used to support design, fabrication, operation, change of service and life extension programmes, and are employed widely in a large number of industries, including power generation, oil & gas and chemical processes.
Today the health and safety risks concerned with ageing equipment and the associated regulatory demands are coupled with the paradoxical drive for optimising capital and operational costs. As these competing pressures grow and existing equipment age, fitness-for-service (FFS) assessment is becoming widely used as part of the plant life management process to confidently increase availability, reliability, efficiency and safety.
TWI has a long history in the area of fitness for service and flaw assessment and has developed several underlying elements and methodologies, which are now used as industry standards such as BS 7910:2005 and API 579-1/ASME FFS-1:2007. These cover the assessment of variety of components including pressure vessels, structures, piping systems and pipelines in the refining, petrochemicals and utilities industries and oil and gas pipelines under variety of service condition both offshore and onshore.
Through its established multidisciplinary teams and services in the areas of structural integrity, materials, inspection and welding, and continuous expert consulting and in depth research, TWI is the industry leader in the area of FFS, providing assistance to its large international network of industrial member companies.
Fitness for service can be provided after implementation of RBI and Inspection methods including Direct Assessment, Phased Array and TOFD, all of which are provided through TWI services. Temporary repair and reinforcement can be undertaken in some cases to maintain structural integrity while a permanent remedy is devised and implemented.
Interpretation of the damages and service data obtained by Inspection services and the subsequent stress analysis and numerical modelling and the final FFS assessment is provided by TWI’s relevant experts and through the use of appropriate software.
TWI has done and routinely develops non-standard test methodologies in addition to more standard tests such as boat sampling, metallographic surface replication, portable hardness testing and etc can be provided to produce new microstructure-property relationships where existing data are inadequate to ensure future fitness-for-service.
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