Fitness-for-service assessment is a multi-disciplinary engineering approach that is used to determine if equipment is fit to continue operation for some desired future period. The equipment may contain flaws, have sustained damage, or have aged so that it cannot be evaluated by use of the original construction codes. API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 is a comprehensive consensus industry recommended practice that can be used to analyse, evaluate, and monitor equipment for continued operation. The main types of equipment covered by this standard are pressure vessels, piping, and tanks. This course is timely, emphasizing the practical application of a recently updated standard.

Completing this course will help participants understand and apply the API/ASME fitness-for-service standard in their daily work. The material presented in the course shows how the disciplines of stress analysis, materials engineering, and non-destructive inspection interact and apply to fitness-for-service assessment. The assessment methods apply to pressure vessels, piping, and tanks that are in-service.

The course includes an extensive set of notes to supplement the contents of the recommended practice, and the recommended practice contains numerous example problems that illustrate fitness-for-service assessment.

You Will Learn To

• Analyze, evaluate, and monitor pressure vessels, piping, and tanks for continued operation
  
• Explain how to apply background information on fitness-for-service assessment, especially as it applies to the refining and chemical process industries, which are the primary focus of API 579
  
• Identify the main parts of the API/ASME standard, as well as the annexes
  
• Explain the practical application of the techniques incorporated in API 579-1/ASME FFS-1

Risk-based inspection (RBI) is the process of developing an inspection plan based on knowledge of the risk of failure of a given equipment.
It offers risk and reliability assessment to engineering products and services. Good knowledge of materials degradation processes is required to develop the right plan for each scenario.

Using an established methodology and new software, we can develop maintenance or replacement solutions, giving guidance on managing assets in the most effective manner, from individual component studies through to turnkey, plant-wide projects – as per individual needs, thus maximising the reliability and efficiency of a structure or component.

Risk-based inspection can be done in a qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative manner, using guidance from standards applicable to different situations such as API 581 for oil and gas and petro-chemical scenarios, and DNV-RP F116 for subsea pipeline. Other assets for which RBIs are valuable are storage tanks, onshore pipelines and structures, and power generation components such as steam turbines, gas turbines, heat recovery steam generators and balance-of-plant systems.

The essential element in all these situations is a risk analysis: the combination of an assessment of the likelihood of failure due to damage, deterioration or degradation, and the consequences of any such failure. The information gained from this process is used to identify the type and rate of damage that could potentially occur and the equipment or locations where failure would give rise to danger of different degrees.

Benefits

Risk-based inspection is a means of using inspection resources more cost-effectively and with confidence. The method ensures that you are complying with current safety regulations and also enables you to make inspection decisions informed by greater information and expertise, thereby saving time and money.
Plant operators face an increasingly complex challenge when managing the integrity of assets: to achieve operational excellence and maximum asset performance while minimising costs and maintaining the highest safety and environmental standards.

Risk-based inspection principles offer an established methodology for efficient plant maintenance and, with our expertise and specialised software; it can be used to develop cost-effective management solutions.

More information can be found in services that:

• Maximize plant life and availability
  
• Optimize inspection, repair and maintenance spend
  
• Implement risk-based inspection principles
  
• Meet safety, environmental and reliability requirements
  
• Train equipment owners and operators to be more informed and competent engineers
  
• Provide software tools for equipment owners and operators (standard and customized packages)
  
• Provide rapid on- and off-site engineering consultancy for plant irregularities
  
• Undertake design reviews
  
• Assess in-service damage

Risk-based maintenance (RBM): a quantitative approach for maintenance/inspection scheduling and planning Various Quality Management & Industrial Training Courses Procedure writing