The Corporate Magazine (www.thecorporatemagazine.com) approached us recently to be featured in their “Top 20 Most Dynamic Leaders” issue. We saw this as a unique opportunity to elevate our brand by briefly discussing our two-year journey under Mark, expanding on our history, highlighting our offerings, and sharing our unique value to the industries we serve.
To read the full article, click here.
A CASE STUDY FROM THE FERMILAB LONG BASELINE FACILITY
By: Keith Kubischta and Andy Coughlin, PE, SE
Background
In Batavia, Illinois a facility being built that is the first of its kind in the world. Fermilab’s Long Baseline Neutrino Facility will accelerate protons using electromagnets up to incredible speeds in a particle accelerator. After traveling through the campus, the particles are redirected to a graphite target where the collision breaks them into their component particles: pions and muons. These components decay and are segregated off. What is left is believed to be the building blocks of the universe: neutrinos, which can pass undisturbed through matter. A beam of neutrinos passes through near detectors and travels over 800 miles underground to a detection facility in an old mineshaft at Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, a facility that can also detect neutrinos hitting the earth from exploding stars.
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION – THICK FILM SENSORS
By: Jason Van Velsor and Robert Chambers
The ability to continuously monitor component thickness at high temperatures has many benefits in the power generation industry, as well as many other industries. Most significantly, it enables condition-based inspection and maintenance, as opposed to schedule-based, which assists plant management with optimizing operations and maintenance budgets and streamlining outage schedules. Furthermore, it can assist with the early identification of potential issues, which may be used to further optimize plant operations and provides ample time for contingency and repair planning.
Over the last several years, Structural Integrity has been working on the development of a real-time thickness monitoring technology that utilizes robust, unobtrusive, ultrasonic thick-film sensor technology that is enabling continuous operation at temperatures up to 800°F.
ENGINEERING CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
By: Pete Riccardella, Scott Riccardella and Chris Tipple
The Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. Oil and Gas Pipeline group recently supported an Engineering Critical Assessment to assist a pipeline operator manage the Selective Seam Weld Corrosion (SSWC) threat to an operating pipeline. SSWC occurs when the fusion zone of a certain type of seam weld used in vintage (pre-1970) transmission pipelines experiences accelerated galvanic corrosion relative to the pipe body material. It has led to numerous pipeline failures because the weld fusion zone often exhibits low fracture toughness. The ECA included several technical advancements in applying fracture mechanics to this threat.
By: Wenfeng Liu
Introduction
PEGASUS, a finite element fuel code developed at SIA, represents a new modeling paradigm. This new paradigm treats all fuel behavior regimes in one continuous analysis. This approach differs significantly from the current conservative practice of bounding analysis to ensure uncertainties are accounted for which results in sub-optimal used fuel management strategies. Using PEGASUS in used fuel evaluation results in significant savings in engineering cost and work force utilization, reduces conservatism, and provides flexibility in the management of used fuel.
SOFTWARE AUTOMATION
By: Adam Roukema and Mark Jaeger
From Tech Pro Research, %’s reflect rate of respondents who believe digital transformation will significantly impact indicated categories
A fundamental tenant of engineering is that where inefficiencies exist, innovation is next. This is especially true in the ongoing era of digital transformation, as software-based automation eliminates mundane, trivial tasks and enables increased focus on value-add activities. A recent poll of workers in the tech industry found that 70% of their respective companies have either committed to or are developing a transformation strategy, with varying emphases (see sidebar). The energy sector is no stranger to these innovations, and while the pace and scope of digital transformation may not appear to match that of driverless cars or moon rockets, its societal impacts are comparably widespread.
Historically, SI has been recognized as a leader in highly technical subject matter areas such as fracture mechanics, material degradation, and nondestructive examination. In many cases, this expertise is aided by digital or software innovations that enable efficient data handling, novel computer aided visualizations, and dynamic performance of complex calculations. In this vein, our MAPPro software is designed to aid in management of aging piping assets and has been an integral resource to the nuclear industry since its inception in 2009.
EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
By: Matt David, Michael Greveling, Daniels Peters and Erick Ritter
Recently, Structural Integrity Associates (SI) helped a client with a leaking deaerator tank (DA tank). DA tanks are traditionally used to remove dissolved gasses from liquids. The client’s DA tank in particular is used to remove dissolved oxygen in feedwater for steam-generating boilers; this is done because dissolved oxygen can create a corrosive environment within the boiler as it will attach to the metal components, creating oxides. The DA tank protects the boiler from these corrosive gasses, however, to the DA tank’s detriment, not much protects it from those same gasses. Repairs on DA tanks are common and additionally it is not uncommon for those repairs to continue to experience problems.
The DA tank being investigated for leaking in this investigation had an entire shell segment, various full thickness patch plates, and a head replaced in 2018 due to wall thinning caused by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC). The current leak was caused by cracking of a girth and longitudinal seam weld in a mismatched repair patch. The failure prompted inspection, stress analysis, and repair consulting by SI. The following reveals the steps taken to repair the failed DA tank.
Initial visual inspection of the leaking DA tank indicated that the problematic repair patch had significant radial mismatch relative to the tank shell to which it was welded and grossly oversized weld layers resulting in high tensile shrinking stresses. The mismatch resulted in significant bending at the weld line and the excessive weaving of the weld layers led to tensile forces acting on the weld imperfections at the toe of the welds. Due to the visual finding, 3D scanning was performed to better understand the magnitude of the mismatch.
COMPONENT LONGEVITY
By: John Molloy
Introduction
An industrial combustion turbine can ingest over 1000lbs of air per hour of operation. Entrained within the air is a spectrum of mineral, salt, moisture, and VOC, and other compounds that are present in the local atmosphere. Locally high concentrations of potentially corrosive species may also be present due to surrounding industries or even effluent from the power plant itself, such as cooling tower drift, evaporation cooler deposits, or water treatment effluent.
In addition to disrupting the flow path area of the compressor blades and vanes, with a consequential drop in compressor efficiency, these contaminants can also serve as sites for under-deposit corrosion cells that have implications for component life as well as risk for catastrophic failures. Compressor waterwashing with detergents has been utilized with some success by utilities as a method for mitigating the effects of deposit accumulation. Nevertheless, tenacious deposits can accumulate over time. The presence of moisture in the deposit can also result in activation of a corrosion cell that can corrode the typical stainless steels used for blade and vane construction. Higher strength PH stainless steel blades and vanes suffer a larger loss in fatigue endurance limit from pitting, and tend to suffer more airfoil liberations due to cracking initiated at pitting.
Jason Van Velsor, Robert Chambers
The ability to continuously monitor component thickness at high temperatures has many benefits in the power generation industry, as well as many other industries. Most significantly, it enables condition-based inspection and maintenance, as opposed to schedule-based, which assists plant management optimizing operations and maintenance budgets and streamlining outage schedules. Furthermore, it can assist with the early identification of potential issues, which may be used to further optimize plant operations and provides ample time for contingency and repair planning.Over the last several years, Structural Integrity has been working on the development of a real-time thickness monitoring technology that utilizes robust, unobtrusive, ultrasonic thick-film sensor technology that is enabling continuous operation at temperatures up to 800°F. Figure 1 shows a photograph of an installed ultrasonic thick-film array, illustrating the low-profile, surface-conforming nature of the sensor technology. The current version of this sensor technology has been demonstrated to operate continuously for over two years at temperatures up to 800°F, as seen in the plot in Figure 2. These sensors are now offered as part of SI’s SIIQ™ intelligent monitoring system.
Figure 1 – Photograph of an ultrasonic thick-film array for monitoring wall-thickness over a critical area of a component.
Figure 2 – A plot of ultrasonic signal amplitude over time for a sensor operating continuously at an atmospheric and component temperature of 800°F.
In addition to significant laboratory testing, the installation, performance, and longevity of Structural Integrity’s thick-film ultrasonic sensor technology has been demonstrated in actual operating power plant conditions, as seen in the photograph in Figure 3, where the sensors have been installed on multiple high-temperature piping components that are susceptible to wall thinning from erosion. In this application, the sensors are fabricated directly on the external surface of the pipe, covered with a protective coating, and then covered with the original piping insulation. Following installation, data can either be collected and transferred automatically using an installed data acquisition instrument, or a connection panel can be installed that permits users to periodically acquire data using a traditional off-the-shelf ultrasonic instrument.
Figure 4 shows two sets of ultrasonic data that were acquired approximately eight months apart at an operating power plant. The first data set was acquired at the time of sensor installation and the second data set was acquired after approximately eight months of typical cycling, with temperatures reaching up to ~500°F. Based on the observed change in the time-of-flight between the multiple backwall echoes observed in the signals, it is possible to determine that there has been approximately 0.005 inches of wall loss over the 8-month period. Accurately quantifying such as small loss in wall thickness can often provide meaningful insight into plant operations and processes, can provide an early indication of possible issues, and is only possible when using installed sensors.
Other potential applications of Structural Integrity’s ultrasonic thick-film sensor technology include the following:
In addition to novel sensor technologies to generate data, Structural Integrity offers customizable asset integrity management solutions, as part of the SIIQ platform, such as PlantTrackª, for storing and managing critical data. Many of these solutions are able to connect with plant historians to gather additional data that feed our engineering-based analytical algorithms, which assist in converting data into actionable information regarding plant assets. These algorithms are based on decades of engineering consulting and assessment experience in the power generation industry.
Reach out to one of our NDE experts to learn more about SI’s cutting-edge thick-film UT technology.
Figure 3 – Photograph showing Structural Integrity’s thick-film ultrasonic sensor technology installed on two high-temperature piping elbows that are susceptible to thinning from erosion.
Figure 4 – Ultrasonic waveforms acquired approximately 8 months apart showing 0.005 inches of wall loss at the sensor location over this period.
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