A SURVEY OF EUROPEAN INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE HIDA PROJECT

This paper describes the activity performed within one of the main tas ks of the HIDA project, i.e. to collate and analyse cases of component cracking in high temperature plant. This work involved collecting and processing a large body of information, contributed from both HIDA Co nsortium partners and external industrial organisations. This exercise resulted in a large sample of collated data from the power and petroc hemical plant in Europe. This work showed that high temperature cracki ng is a major problem, the occurrence of which is expected to increase in the near future. Most cracks affect welds, the assessment of which is largely complicated by the simultaneous presence of different mate rials, with different deformation and cracking behaviours. Thus, a too l suitable to assess high temperature defects must be able to deal wit h welds.