News & Views, Volume 44 | Real-Time Damage Tracking with SI Technology and GP Strategies’ EtaPro
By: Matt Freeman
Expanding Capabilities in Condition-based Pressure-part Integrity Management
Structural Integrity and GP Strategies recently announced an agreement to bring SI’s technology for calculating, tracking, and trending life consumption of piping and boiler components to GP Strategies EtaPRO real-time monitoring platform (Press release here). SI has a long history with creep and fatigue damage monitoring applications, most recently with the suite of applications available as part of SI’s PlantTrack platform. The partnership with GP Strategies brings that technology to EtaPRO, which is used worldwide by power-generating organizations to monitor the performance and reliability of their generation assets.
EtaPRO users will benefit from easy integration of SI’s leading-edge Boiler and Piping Component Reliability (BPCR) modules to quantify damage to high-pressure, high-temperature components such as tubing, piping, headers, and desuperheaters. The BPCR modules track and trend accumulated creep and fatigue damage in real time using SI’s proprietary algorithms that combine actual operating data and material condition with a plant’s specific configuration. Plant operators can use the resulting life consumption estimates to guide asset management decisions, such as changes in operating procedures, targeted inspections, or off-line analysis of anomalous conditions.
