News and Views Archives

News & Views, Volume 48 | Metallurgical Lab Case Study – Grade 91 Elbows Cracked Before Installation

September 30, 2020/in Materials Laboratory, News and Views, Terry Totemeier, Wendy Weiss/by Structural Integrity

By: Wendy Weiss and Terry Totemeier

Structural Integrity (SI) personnel visited a power plant construction site to examine four Grade 91 elbows (ASTM A234-WP91 20-inch OD Sch. 60) that were found to contain axially oriented surface indications. The elbows had not yet been installed. The indications were initially noticed during magnetic particle testing (MT) after one end of an elbow was field welded to a straight section and post weld heat treated (PWHT). Subsequently, three additional similarly welded elbows were inspected and indications were found at both the welded (inlet) and open (outlet) ends of three elbows. The elbow with the most significant indications was selected for SI’s on-site examinations. Figure 1 shows the inlet and outlet ends of the selected elbow.

News & View, Volume 48 | Bypass Line Spray Issues

News & Views, Volume 48 | Bypass Line Spray Issues

September 30, 2020/in Ben Ruchte, Combined Cycle, Fossil Power, Kane Riggenbach, News and Views/by Structural Integrity

By: Ben Ruchte and Kane Riggenbach

To provide operating flexibility, combined cycle plants are typically equipped with bypass systems (high pressure routing steam to cold reheat and hot reheat routing steam to the condenser). These bypass systems include conditioning valves designed to reduce steam pressures followed by outlet desuperheaters which inject water to reduce steam temperatures.

This service environment exposes the downstream piping to a high frequency of temperature transients making these areas one of the most prominent ‘industry issues’.

News & View, Volume 48 | Considerations of Pin Cracking in Finger Pin Turbine Blade Attachments

News & Views, Volume 48 | Considerations of Pin Cracking in Finger Pin Turbine Blade Attachments

September 30, 2020/in Cliff Lange, Matt Freeman, News and Views, Turbine Generator/by Structural Integrity

By: Cliff Lange and Matt Freeman

OEMs recommend periodic inspection of pinned finger turbine blade attachments for detection of service-induced damage as part of ongoing rotor maintenance activity.

This article provides an example where ultrasonic inspection detected cracking in several pins of finger attachments and outlines an engineering assessment to support continued operation and identify a re-inspection interval. This approach can be applied to other pinned finger blade attachments to determine suitability for service.

News & Views, Volume 48 | SI Field Service Quality and Efficiency Solutions

September 30, 2020/in News and Views, Non-Destructive Evaluation, Robert Chambers, Trey Rippy/by Structural Integrity

By: Robert Chambers and Trey Rippy

To help meet demanding outage schedules and stay within lean operation and maintenance budgets, Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. (SI) has implemented several new field data collection and analysis tools that enable delivery of a higher-quality final inspection product in a more efficient manner. These include customized software tools for streamlining the NDE data acquisition, analysis, and reporting processes. Moving forward, these tools will reduce time-on-pipe for inspections, as well as the associated analysis and reporting time.

For large inspection scopes, collecting, tagging, managing, transferring, and documenting data can be a very labor-intensive process with opportunities for human performance errors. While inspection instruments and analysis software typically have built-in reporting capabilities, these tend to be very general so they can be applied to a wide variety of applications. This can make it cumbersome to tailor these features to a specific application.

News & View, Volume 48 | Post Seismic Certification - What Do Manufacturers Do to Keep Their Products TRU Listed?

News & Views, Volume 48 | Post Seismic Certification: What Do Manufacturers Do to Keep Their Products TRU Listed?

September 30, 2020/in Critical Structures, Galen Reid, Katie Braman, News and Views, TRU Compliance/by Structural Integrity

By: Galen Reid and Katie Braman How does TRU or the public know the manufacturer is continuing to produce a product that complies with the certified construction and configuration without retesting periodically? Certification of products to withstand extreme event loading can open many opportunities for manufacturers to sell high value products when others have a […]

News & Views, Volume 48 | SI Supports Parsons’ “DetectWise” Modular COVID Test Facility

September 30, 2020/in Complex Loadings, Critical Structures, News and Views, TRU Compliance/by Structural Integrity

By: Zach Withall and Matthew Naugle, PE

The health facility is designed to fully separate patients from medical workers, protecting both parties and minimizing the PPE required to operate the suite.

COVID-19 has presented humanity with unprecedented challenges. As economies reopen, solutions are needed that allow businesses to operate while protecting the health, safety, and security of the general public.

In an effort to positively impact that change, Structural Integrity Associates (SI) is working with Parsons Corporation, a global technology leader, to design a self-contained, mobile health screening facility for rapid, efficient and scalable testing.

The mobile facility is part of Parsons’ DetectWise™ suite of health solutions meant to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. SI provided structural design services for the facility.

News & Views, Volume 48 | Implementation of Material Verification – In Support of Mega-Rule Part 1 Requirements

September 30, 2020/in David Babbitt, Mega-Rule, News and Views, Oil and Gas Pipeline, Roger Royer, Scott Riccardella/by Structural Integrity

By: Roger Royer, Scott Riccardella, and David Babbitt

Operators are now required to define sampling programs and perform destructive (laboratory) or non-destructive testing to capture this information and take additional actions when inconsistent results are identified until a confidence level of 95% is achieved.

Various sections of Mega-Rule 1 require operators of natural gas transmission pipelines to ensure adequate Traceable, Verifiable, and Complete (TV&C) material records or implement a Material Verification (MV) Program to confirm specific pipeline attributes including diameter, wall thickness, seam type, and grade. Operators are now required to define sampling programs and perform destructive (laboratory) or non-destructive testing to capture this information and take additional actions when inconsistent results are identified until a confidence level of 95% is achieved. Opportunistic sampling per population is required until completion of testing of one excavation per mile (rounded up to the nearest whole number) up to 150 excavations (if the population exceeds 150 miles). Regulators have communicated an expectation that sampling locations or test sites are to be equally spaced throughout the population mileage.

News & Views, Volume 48 | Strategic Evaluation of MAOP – Reconfirmation Plans and Options

September 30, 2020/in Bruce Paskett, News and Views, Oil and Gas Pipeline, Scott Riccardella/by Structural Integrity

By: Scott Riccardella and Bruce Paskett

On October 1, 2019, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) published amendments to 49 CFR Parts 191 and 192 in the Federal Register issuing the Pipeline Safety: Safety of Gas Transmission Pipelines: MAOP Reconfirmation, Expansion of Assessment Requirements, and Other Related Amendments Final Rule (Final Rule).

The Final Rule requires that for on-shore steel transmission pipelines in an High Consequence Area (HCA), Class 3 or 4 location without Traceable, Verifiable and Complete (TV&C) records for §192.619(a)(2) (pressure testing, including records required by §192.517(a)) ; or where the Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure (MAOP) was established based on the Grandfather Clause and the MAOP creates a stress ≥ 30% of the Specified Minimum Yield Strength (SMYS), an operator will need to reconfirm the MAOP in accordance with the provisions of §192.624.

News & View, Volume 47 | Aircraft Impact Assessments for NUSCALE Power

News & Views, Volume 47 | Aircraft Impact Assessments for NUSCALE Power

March 3, 2020/in Critical Structures, Eric Kjolsing, News and Views, Structural Assessments/by Structural Integrity

By: Eric Kjolsing, Ph.D., PE

From 2015 to 2019 Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. (SI) worked with NuScale Power,LLC. to develop structural details for and perform aircraft impact assessments of NuScale’s SMR Reactor Building. The assessments were based on finite element analyses of various strike scenarios stemming from NEI 07-13 guidance. ANACAP, a proprietary SI concrete constitutive model, was used in the finite element analyses. Among other capabilities, the ANACAP model can capture multi-axial tensile cracking, compressive crushing with strain softening, and crack dependent shear stiffness.

News & View, Volume 47 | How To Make Knowing A Good Thing: Thinning Handbooks

March 3, 2020/in News and Views, Nuclear Asset Integrity, Nuclear Energy, Stephen Parker/by Structural Integrity

By: Stephen Parker and Eric Houston

SI has developed a process to mitigate the negative outcomes of piping examination. One part of that process is Thinning Handbooks, which have resulted in direct savings in excess of $10 Million for one nuclear plant.

Examination of Safety Related Service Water piping is driven by a number of factors, all of which tend to converge on the objective of finding localized thinning prior to the thinning becoming a problem. In other words, examinations are performed to eliminate the risk of a leak and ensure that the wall thickness remains greater than t_min (the minimum required uniform wall thickness). However, the rules, regulations, and economic realities mean that only bad things happen from an exam regardless of what is found.