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Areas of expertise
Fatigue and Fracture Analysis
Requalification of Structures
Composite Materials
Corrosion Analysis
Reliability of inspection and monitoring systems; recent years have seen enormous activity in t he development of
Integrity Monitoring equipment and systems. Advances in wireless communication, miniaturisation of electronics,
increased processing and data storage have fuelled this explosion in sensor and system development that
promises to provide high quality mechanical integrity information that will allow optimum use of facilities whilst
improving safety and reliability. Systems based on technology that could in the past only be used under
laboratory conditions are now frequently deployed in the field very often claiming accuracy and reliability
commensurate with laboratory measurements. Monitoring is certainly an exciting prospect and has many
advantages over traditional NDT; there are however, some very fundamental issues that must be resolved to
benefit fully from these new technologies. Not least of these is providing the facilities manager with the
appropriate understanding of the reliability of the inspection and monitoring techniques and how this information
can be integrated into fitness-for-service and criticality assessments.
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Facilities
Structural Integrity Laboratory
The Structural Integrity Laboratory has a range of servo-hydraulic materials and fatigue testing facilities, from 100kN to
2.5MN capacity, as standard test machines or as test rigs built about full or large-scale components. Loading of
specimens and components is possible under unaxial tension-compression, bending and rotating bend arrangements. A
pipe pressure-temperature rig is available and used for testing and verification of composite pipeline repair systems.
A range of inspection/NDT equipment and structural health monitoring systems are used for crack and stress
measurement. The laboratory specialises in the testing of non-standard specimens and components, development
of fatigue design rules, acceptance testing and inspection reliability trials.
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Further information