In the afternoon of May 18th the partners of the Metal Structures Centre organised their second seminar on structural integrity of metal structures. Over 60 people joined to listen to practical cases, with presenters from different industrial sectors explaining their approach to specific problems related to the integrity of several types of metal structures.
INFRABEL held the keynote speech in which an overview of their ageing assets was given. For Infrabel, targeted monitoring is being carried out on steel bridges, rail tracks and catenaries, which results in and showed that the number of breakdowns keeps on being reduced through targeted monitoring.
ALLIED RELIABILITY presented the results of the monitoring campaign on overhead cranes at an ArcelorMittal steel plant and showed that using vibration analysis it was possible to identify bearing cracks.
SIRI MARINE continued with a presentation on the monitoring on an offshore jacket structure, whereby failure of a member on the Delta platform could be identified.
Offshore wind farm owner PARKWIND presented their approach on how to deal with the very complex combined corrosion phenomena and still assess the design lifetime risk on their monopile foundations due to uniform and pitting corrosion.
HUISMAN explained their engineering critical assessment (ECA) approach on avoiding post weld heat treatment on a crane and thus save time and cost, based on testing work performed at the Metal Structure Centre (MSC).
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JAN DE NUL laid out the evolution in design, material use and welding for the spud construction for cutter dredgers and discussed the use of fracture toughness testing, combined with wide plate testing both performed at MSC.
At the end SAIPEM talked about their ECA approach towards the structural integrity assessment of flawed multi-metallic welds, by using a numerical investigation on the crack driving force whereby an equivalent material was defined as lower bound instead of using all materials in the weld joints incl. a clad interface.
The presentations were followed by discussion sessions, with lot of interaction from the audience and the speakers. Different experiences from across different sectors, ranging from railway infrastructure, cranes, oil and gas up to offshore wind applications were shared.
The MSC intends to organise a third structural integrity seminar, and is currently evaluating the feedback received to further improve the organisation of next year’s edition.
For further information on the Metal Structures Centre: please visit: www.metalstructures.be
