Case Studies

This article provides an overview of brittle fracture, details on several industry failures, and a summary of deficiencies and concerns with current published methods for screening susceptibility of equipment to potential brittle fracture failures.

Field hardness tests can provide valuable information when evaluating piping and pressure vessel anomalies. This article summarizes laboratory examinations designed to gain a better understanding of UCI hardness test results taken in the field.

This article presents a comprehensive integrity management program for catalyst tubes, including elements on monitoring, inspection, data analysis, remaining life assessment, and control of human factors.

This article reviews the effectiveness of AET for inspecting tank bottoms in two ways; namely, benchmarking regulations in different countries and comparing AET and MFLT results through a case study.

This article describes the construction of corrosion-resistant fiber reinforced polymer (FRP), commonly used for pressure vessels and piping in the chemical processing industry, and the practices used for inspecting corrosion-resistant barriers.

This case study discusses costly repairs that were needed on newly fabricated pressure vessels as a result of poor UT practices. The author shines a light on some industry problems that can be fixed with an understanding of what is actually required.

This article addresses two failure events where inadequate attention to thermal fatigue led to premature equipment failure while specifying guidelines to help prevent such failures that can be a part of a plant's inspection and maintenance programs.

The author will discuss the failure of a dissimilar joint while examining the root causes of the failure along with potential solutions and preventive actions that would not compromise the welding production rate.

This article helps shine light on some common industry problems that can occur by having inferior UT procedures and practices, while providing several lessons learned through a case study that resulted in nearly $1 million in turnaround repairs.

This article examines multiple trials that entailed testing robotic systems on different non-magnetic surfaces to identify the feasibility of detecting CUI using robotics in combination with NDE technology.

This article presents two cases studies demonstrating how properly conducting baseline fired heater tube inspection aids in early discovery and correction of defects, avoiding unexpected in-service failures, and more.

The author discusses a method being used in most of their refineries and petrochemical facilities that allows them to optimize the scope of NDT during turnarounds, while improving the reliability of bundles.

This case study is intended to demonstrate how a Qualitative Risk Assessment can be a cost-effective and resource-efficient means to prioritize equipment which is often “under the radar”.

A significant number of pipeline failures due to external or internal corrosion have resulted from MIC, some with catastrophic consequences. This article demonstrates a three-step failure analysis process used to investigate the failure mechanism.

Gasification technology has emerged in oil and gas due to the high combustion energy of Syngas and less environmental concerns than flue gas. This article discusses proper inspection and corrosion monitoring techniques for gasification units.

Traditional pressure vessel inspections often require taking assets out of service. However, MISTRAS’ Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) programs provide data as good or better than internal inspections, while assets remain in service. NII is...