Stress Engineering Services
Company Profile
At Stress Engineering Services (SES) we specialize in taking on your toughest technical problems, because we understand that you don't just want answers; you want the right answers.Problem solving is what we do. Solutions are what we deliver. It is our commitment to provide the most comprehensive design, analysis, and testing services with an unsurpassed level of engineering integrity and skill. This devotion to quality stems from the two basic principles on which the company was founded - technical excellence and a passion to serve.
From Upstream Oil and Gas to Downstream Chemicals and Refining, Plastics to Packaging, Materials to Testing, Medical to Pharmaceutical, Pipelines to Power, and Measurements to Forensics, we have the experience, knowledge, and tools to take on your toughest technical challenges and deliver the right answers.
Corporate Headquarters
13800 Westfair East
Houston, Texas 77041-1101 United States
(281) 955-2900
Auto-Refrigeration / Brittle Fracture
At SES, we use a comprehensive approach to identifying susceptible equipment, executing the brittle fracture analysis, and performing the process hazards analyses to evaluate and develop mitigation for at-risk vessels and piping.
HTHA Assessments
HTHA continues to be a process-safety issue within the refinery and chemicals industries. There is a growing industry need for HTHA damage assessments to assist with asset prioritization and capital planning. In response, we developed two new HTHA damage life assessment methods.
Vulnerability Assessments
Corrosion reviews of process units are routinely performed as part of a mechanical integrity program for pressure vessels and piping systems. We have the engineers experienced in process corrosion, inspection and mechanical integrity who can provide top-level corrosion vulnerability assessments.
Fire Damage Assessments
Recovering from a fire can be challenging and complex, but an experienced team can reduce the impact and restore operations quickly and safely. This begins with an incident safety evaluation of the site and confirmation of what equipment can be run, what must be repaired, and what must be replaced.
Turnaround Support
Turnarounds are high stakes activities where all the known issues are addressed via inspection, analysis and planning and the unknowns are discovered and dealt with, all in real time. We excel at providing comprehensive engineering support services in preparation for and during turnarounds.
Plant Engineering Services
SES provides timely and cost-effective engineering solutions to improve plant and refinery on-stream efficiency, safety, and reliability. Engineering Assessments - Field Services & Monitoring - Materials Engineering - Testing Services - and more.
Stress Engineering Services's Inspectioneering Content
Part 8 of API 579 provides valuable techniques for simple and conservative closed-form solutions, which can be quicker and easier than an FEA.
Miner’s rule remains the most used fatigue damage accumulation approach in the oil and gas industry.
Real-world cracks don’t often resemble the idealized cracks on which fracture mechanics solutions are based. This is when categorization rules come into play.
The API 579 Committee has been steadily working for 10 years on a procedure to evaluate vibration in piping systems. That long work is about to pay off.
A discussion on the rationale for being cautious with an inspection of older vessels and how to decide when such inspection is appropriate.
Local thin area (LTA) assessments rarely fail. It happens, but not often. Let’s look at examples of how significant an LTA can be and still pass an assessment.
Ferritic materials change in toughness as a function of temperature, but the change is non-linear and happens at different temperatures for different materials.
Discussion on the new Annex 9J procedure with examples using the Part 3 exemption curve, the 9J General Procedure, and the 9J Simple Procedure.
A closer look at the evolution of remaining strength factors (RSF) from its mention in early papers to the latest edition of API 579.
The latest edition of the API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 Fitness-for-Service Code was released at the end of 2021. It seems like a good time to have a conversation with the Chair of that committee, Ben Hantz, to get his perspective on the evolution of FFS.
As one of the simpler API 579 FFS assessments, there are relevant criteria to check that are necessary to assess and evaluate laminations.
This article discusses some of the common fitness-for-service (FFS) issues plant engineers in the chemical and refining industry are facing and a handful of recommendations on how to improve them.
Component type is important when assessing the applicability and limitations of a particular assessment (Part and Level) to a particular component. This article explains the evolution of component type definition over the years.
There are many excellent changes and updates in the new edition of API 579, including significant technical changes and improvements. In this FFS Forum article, I’ll go through many of what I believe to be the most important changes.
This follow-up article discusses the important topic of establishing Heat Exposure Zones and Level 1, 2, and 3 fitness-for-service assessments following a plant fire.
Part 1 presents a brief overview of the process of assessing equipment in a post-fire "return-to-service" effort and discusses some common issues that may arise during that process.
This article addresses some of the advantages and disadvantages of acoustic emission testing and discusses a few examples of its typical applications.
FFS assessments usually originate from inspection results and often end with a recommended inspection plan. This FFS Forum tries to provide a little better understanding of one particular inspection method: Acoustic Emission Testing.
The 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.
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.
Fracture 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
This is the second of a two-part column on “Creep.” This second part discusses the approach to creep assessment in plant equipment.
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...
What do you do when you first discover a mechanical failure? Maybe your pipe sprang a leak, a drive shaft snapped, or a welded joint fractured, and you need to find out why. This infographic details some steps you can take to avoid critical mistakes.
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.
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.
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.
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...
API 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.
There is concern in the industry over recent findings of reduced toughness fittings and flanges at risk of brittle fracture. This article provides an overview; possible contributors; measures taken to address; and a proposed FFS approach to address...
The actions you take immediately after a failure are critical in understanding the cause and appropriate steps to remedy the problem. However, the wrong moves might prevent you from getting the answers you need.
Fired heaters are among the most critical equipment in refineries and chemical plants. This article provides an overview of what a fired heater tube mechanical integrity program should include.
An overview of process piping vibration and evaluating piping systems in vibration service to reduce harmful vibrations.
Aging equipment, along with more aggressive service, makes it more important than ever to carry out fitness-for-service (FFS) assessments in support of run/repair/replace decisions. Testing material in the service-degraded condition enables...
To ensure the mechanical integrity and fitness-for-service (FFS) of equipment, facility managers, reliability engineers, and inspection technicians must understand the HTHA damage mechanism.
This article introduces portions of a “Best-In-Class” Fitness-for-Service (FFS) program that includes the performance of regular visual inspections of pipe supports and hangers, coupled with in-situ load testing of suspect supports. This...
Historically, regulations regarding dent severity have been governed by one of two metrics: dent depth or strain. In the case of the former, plain dents with a depth up to 6% of the nominal diameter are permitted in both gas and liquid pipelines....
Today, more than ever, refinery operators are focused on maintaining safe operations for their employees and extending the life cycle of valuable operating equipment to optimize efficiencies and avoid expensive unforeseen shutdowns. When process...
As any refining or petrochemical plant manager knows, corrosion can occur on insulated piping at any facility. CUI has been a major challenge for the petrochemical and refining industries since the first pipelines were insulated with wrappings.
Recently, Inspectioneering Journal sat down with Stress Engineering’s Bobby Wright and Ralph King to discuss how companies can better transfer and preserve industry knowledge.
Auto-refrigeration is a process where an unintentional and/or uncontrolled phase change of a hydrocarbon from a liquid state to a vapor occurs, resulting in a very rapid chilling (refrigeration) of the liquid containing local equipment and/or...
Predicting the remaining life of components operating in the creep regime is one of the trickiest problems encountered in the fitness-for-service (FFS) world.
If 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...
An all too familiar scenario in power plants is one in which an inspection finding occurs late in an outage and consequently, the return to service date may need to be postponed to allow time for corrective action. Historically, cracks or thinned...
The most common equipment vibration problems are often solved in industry without the use of specialty engineering resources. Routine vibration problems-from machinery imbalance and misalignment to simple cases of noise and resonance-are often...
Describes a non-destructive sampling procedure which records and preserves the topography of a metallographic specimen as a negative relief on a plastic film (replica).
Reformer catalyst tubes are commonly manufactured from high strength, creep and corrosion resistant alloys. They are relatively thick walled and are usually produced by centrifugal casting. Their lives are limited by creep, driven by a combination...
Evaluations of aged and critical service vessels such as FCCU's and Delayed Cokers have been aided by the addition of two physical measurements referred to as structural characterizations. These are placed in perspective with the classic...
Stress Engineering Services, a global leader in delivering complex engineering services, has launched SES Renewables Solutions, a new group dedicated to providing engineering solutions across a broad range of renewable energy industries.
Lincoln Electric and Stress Engineering Services, Inc. (SES) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to formalize their collaboration in large-format metal additive manufacturing (AM).
Stress Engineering Services, Inc. (SES), the global leader in consulting engineering services and solutions, has opened offices in two new locations: Irvine, California and Columbus, New Jersey.
Stress Engineering Services has launched its new Digital Solutions Group aimed at reducing energy industry clients’ costs and managing risks through best-in-class digital technologies.
The acquisition will provide high-resolution pipe ID scanning hardware and imaging software while enhancing Stress Engineering Services’s competencies within upstream, midstream, downstream, aerospace, consumer, and medical services.
This Asset Intelligence Report on Acoustic Emission Testing provides an introduction to the NDE technique, including information on industry applications.
This eBook is intended to give the uninitiated user a good general overview of the concepts and approach to Fitness-For-Service that represent the current “Best Practice.”