10/07/05

Flaws (such as cracks and welding defects) can arise during the manufacture or during the service life of engineering components components.  For safety-critical items such as deepwater risers, pipelines and pressure vessels, the failure of even a single component due to the presence of a flaw can threaten human life as well as having severe economic and environmental consequences. 

Flaws can be evaluated consistently and objectively using fracture mechanics principles as embodied in procedures such as the UK defect assessment guideline document BS 7910:Guide on methods for assessing the acceptability of flaws in metallic structures.  This document was first released in 1999 as a successor to PD 6493 and has recently been revised (BS 7910:2005)

Users of BS 7910 may already be familiar with CRACKWISE 3 which automates the fracture, fatigue and plastic collapse procedures of BS 7910:1999 allowing the user to:

• decide whether or not to repair flaws in metallic structures
• determine appropriate inspection intervals for plant and equipment
• justify life extension and/or change of use of existing plant and equipment
• set rational acceptance limits for NDT (particularly automated ultrasonic testing)

CRACKWISE 4, the successor to CRACKWISE 3 is now available.  It has all the functionality and user-friendliness of its predecessor but also includes several new features:

• full compatibility with BS 7910:2005
• new software architecture to aid future upgrades and amendments
• improved intermediate results reporting in response to user feedback
• a flexible reporting output to MS Word, MS Excel or PDF format

For further information, please contact crackwise@twi.co.uk or visit www.software.com