Greg Garic: About the Author
Managing Principal, Stress Engineering Services, Inc.
Mr. Garic has over 35 years of experience in pressure systems engineering, particularly in the fitness-for-service assessment of fixed equipment in chemical plants and refineries. He is highly experienced in stress analysis, fracture mechanics, finite element analysis, creep and high temperature material behavior. His practice routinely involves evaluation and troubleshooting of a wide range of fixed equipment problems such as corrosion, crack-like flaws, hot spots, creep, deformation, and many other issues.
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Published Articles
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FFS Forum: Using Fracture Mechanics to Lower Risk and Improve Plant Reliability - Part 3, Practical Applications
January/February 2021 Inspectioneering JournalThe first two parts of this series covered the basics of fracture mechanics and how the FAD is interpreted. This article touches on a few practical points regarding the application of fracture mechanics in a plant environment.
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FFS Forum: Using Fracture Mechanics to Lower Risk and Improve Plant Reliability - Part 2, A Closer Look at the FAD
November/December 2020 Inspectioneering Journal
Every fitness-for-service (FFS) assessment must have a well-defined acceptance criterion. For many damage mechanisms, it’s the “remaining strength factor” (RSF). But for crack-like flaw assessment, it’s the Failure Assessment Diagram, or FAD.
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FFS Forum: Using Fracture Mechanics to Lower Risk and Improve Plant Reliability - Part 1, Introduction to Fracture Mechanics
September/October 2020 Inspectioneering JournalFracture mechanics is a branch of engineering that describes the behavior of cracks – how they grow and when they fracture. Fracture of cracks is particularly dangerous because it can happen without warning under normal operating conditions.
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July/August 2020 Inspectioneering Journal
Assessment procedures in API 579 are organized by damage mechanism. But what happens when different damage mechanisms are in play since the evaluation criteria may not be compatible?
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May/June 2020 Inspectioneering Journal
There are many places where brittle fracture risk can sneak into your plant and many reasons why a new or revised brittle fracture assessment may be required when reviewing your pressure systems. Don’t overlook this dangerous failure mechanism.
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March/April 2020 Inspectioneering Journal
FMR is a useful tool in many situations. It allows nondestructive evaluation of the surface microstructure that is entirely adequate in many cases. However, it is not a panacea, and there are many conditions where it is inadequate.
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January/February 2020 Inspectioneering Journal
There are many sources and occurrences of metal fatigue in the chemical and refining industries. They range from low-cycle thermal stresses in an FCCU, to the relentless pressure cycling of a PSA, to the ultra-high cycles of a rotating pump.
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November/December 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
A cornerstone of Level 1 and 2 metal loss assessment methods in API 579 is the concept of measuring thickness on a grid and constructing a “critical thickness profile.” These concepts are fundamental to Level 1 & 2 assessments in both Parts 4...
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September/October 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
MSDs are an important, but often misunderstood, element of FFS analyses. This column will help readers understand what an MSD is and why it is so important to Fitness-For-Service analysis under API 579.
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FFS Forum: Creep in Heater Tubes and Other Components – Part II: Strategies for Evaluating & Managing Remaining Life
July/August 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
This is the second of a two-part column on “Creep.” This second part discusses the approach to creep assessment in plant equipment.
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May/June 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
This is the first of a two-part column on “Creep”. It presents an engineering overview of the phenomena, answers the question: “What is Creep?”, and provides readers with foundational knowledge for evaluating and managing remaining equipment...
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March/April 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
Brittle fracture and material toughness issues are important concerns in equipment design and FFS. These issues increase when temporary start-up and shutdown conditions require more detailed assessments than provided for in vessel and piping codes.
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January/February 2019 Inspectioneering Journal
The distinction between primary and secondary loads is certainly important in analysis of pressure systems. But this distinction is also important for plant operations and reliability engineers to keep in mind when dealing with day-to-day problems.
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November/December 2018 Inspectioneering Journal
In this edition of the FFS Forum, Greg addresses some issues associated with inspection of vessels that have been in service for a number of decades, and offers some tips for reliability and inspection to follow when inspecting these older vessels.
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September/October 2018 Inspectioneering Journal
In this column, I touch on what I see as an underused FFS technique for corrosion assessment: point assessment of corrosion – a technique that does NOT require a thickness grid. The reason I find this technique useful is largely because it’s so...
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July/August 2018 Inspectioneering JournalAPI 579-1 is a complex document covering several different types of equipment that may contain flaws or damage. Due to its complexity, this article condenses it into six things you need to know.
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May/June 2013 Inspectioneering JournalPredicting the remaining life of components operating in the creep regime is one of the trickiest problems encountered in the fitness-for-service (FFS) world.
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March/April 2013 Inspectioneering JournalIf an operator finds cracking in a furnace waste heat boiler, excessive thinning in an absorption tower, or severe bulging in a converter, FFS assessments—not standard code analyses—are needed to evaluate the unit’s mechanical integrity. FFS assessments, according to the American Petroleum Institute (API), are “quantitative engineering evaluations that are performed to demonstrate the structural integrity of an in-service component containing a flaw or damage.”
