Fitness for service

Fire Damage Assessments

When a fire occurs on your worksite, the recovery process can be challenging and complex. Stress Engineering Services has supported dozens of Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream operators in the U.S. and throughout North America with fire damage assessments.

Our Approach

Our approach to fire damage assessment is based on the API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 Standard, Fitness-for-Service, and our extensive engineering experience in metallurgy, stress analysis, piping analysis, hardness testing, inspection, heat zone mapping and project management. Our team of professionals establishes heat zones and develops specific inspection plans for each piece of equipment. Ultimately, Level 1, 2, or 3 assessments will determine if the equipment must be repaired, replaced, or can be used as-is. A comprehensive final report documents the findings.

Heat Exposure Zones

The Keystone of Fire Damage Assessment

Heat exposure zones are a concept presented in API 579, Part 11, characterized by isobars of maximum sustained ambient temperature during the incident. A visual inspection establishes the highest temperature to which different zones were exposed. The heat exposure zones range from the highest temperature at the center of the fire, to regions that sustained no fire impact

Inspection

Level 1 assessments typically require only visual inspection, but for equipment requiring Level 2 or Level 3 assessment, inspection becomes more involved.

Hardness testing is the most frequently used type of non-destructive examination (NDE) in fire damage assessments. Heat exposure during a fire can either “harden” or “soften” the steel. “Softening” indicates a lower strength, while “hardening” indicates higher strength, less ductility, and increased brittleness in the steel.

Our experts develop specific inspection plans for each piece of equipment, enabling the client to complete the process as quickly as possible.

Level 1,2,And 3 Assessments

Whereas Level 1 fire damage assessment is relatively simple, Level 2 and Level 3 assessments require our expertise and an understanding of materials, mechanics, and plant conditions to ensure the problem is neither over-simplified nor over-analyzed.

Vast Range Of Equipment Types

Fire damage assessments can involve a wide variety of facility processing equipment, structural components, and materials. Our experts have assessed everything from tall towers to condensate drums, including aluminum plate heat exchanges, fin-fan coolers, pumps, compressors, blowers and fans, plant piping, shell and tube heat exchangers, and more.

Failure analysis

Failure analysis is when an investigation takes place to determine the cause of failure, usually with the aim of taking corrective action to fix the problem and mitigate against further failures. Failure analysis is undertaken across all branches of manufacturing industry to prevent future asset and product fails as well as protecting against potentially dangerous risks to people and the environment.

Reasons to Perform Failure Analysis Testing

The failure analysis process provides a number of benefits including financial, legal and safety related outcomes:

Understand Root Cause of Failure

Understanding the root cause is often the fundamental part of the failure analysis process. This involves data collection to ascertain whether failure occurred due to manufacturing or material defect or misuse.

Prevent Asset or Product Failures

Once the cause of failure has been determined corrective actions can be taken to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

Improve Future Products and Processes

Manufacturing processes and product designs can be improved due to an understanding of the failure mode, not only to prevent the problem from happening again but also to prevent costly legal action or replacements as well as protecting a company's reputation.

Prevent Financial Losses and Penalties from Failed Components

Failure can be costly, whether due to expensive outages, a stopping of production, or even legal action as a result. Undertaking failure analysis can prevent these problems from growing or potential failures from happening in the future.

Meet Standards for Products and Assets

Failure mode and effects analysis can help to meet standards for manufacturing processes, failed components, products, or assets going forward.

Determine Liability for Failure

A failure analysis will not only determine the root cause of the failure, but may also assign liability for the failure. This can be used in legal proceedings to not only apportion blame but also protect your self from litigation.

Condition assessment

The integration of condition monitoring is crucial to developing a robust, condition based maintenance strategy or predictive maintenance approach for machinery and equipment used in industrial applications.

Condition monitoring starts with using permanently installed sensors to collect data which is then used to analyse changes in the performance or condition of a machine component while it is in operation. Any change in the performance or condition of the component that deviates from its standard parameters can be an indication of early-stage wear and deterioration. Condition monitoring not only describes the present state of a component, but also provides objective data which can be interpreted to predict its remaining useful life while in operation.

Operators are able to use this knowledge to shape maintenance schedules and inform component repair before catastrophic failure occurs. Condition monitoring, therefore, plays a vital role in both avoiding unplanned downtime and in calculating the life expectancy of an overall plant.

The following techniques can be used solely, or in combination, to monitor the performance of machinery or a component whilst in operation or offline: vibration analysis; acoustic emission testing; thermograph; visual inspection and wear debris analysis such as ferrography and spectrography.

Benefits of condition monitoring

The application of data supplied by condition monitoring techniques has many benefits. By informing root cause analysis, when to take preventative action to avoid failure and assessment of a component’s full lifecycle capacity – it enables operators to manage risk more effectively, and optimise their maintenance and service activities,. This leads to increased reliability and production output, helping to eliminate unplanned shutdowns by up to 75% (in a typical plant with proper implementation) and minimised maintenance costs.

Applications

Condition monitoring informs the detection and checking of leaks, cavitation and flow. It is widely used in the oil & gas industry for management of pressure vessels, storage tanks, pipelines and piping.