Creep Damage

The most common methods used in industry for the assessment of fixed equipment creep are design formulas. These methods use a conservative and simplistic treatment of the component stress behavior, which is appropriate for design purposes, but typically significantly overly-conservative or not applicable for FFS and remaining-life assessments.

By using material-appropriate creep formulas and properties and by employing user-subroutine driven FEA creep assessments, the conservatism of the creep assessment can be adjusted to more appropriate levels. When coupled with microstructure assessment and/or accelerated creep tests, this method offers the most comprehensive approach to determining remaining life. In addition, the FEA results may be used in a practical sense to initiate structural or operational changes to extend the life or to provide input for inspection planning purposes.