Basic principles of analytical flaw assessment methods

Analytical flaw assessment methods play an important role in the industrial realisation of fracture mechanics application. In the field of general as well as specific standards and guidelines there have been rapid development s in recent years. This paper gives a brief review of some of the more impo rtant methods, which have been developed over the last decades. Description s are given of various design curves and failure assessment diagrams, net s ection yielding and EPRI type solutions, the reference stress method and ap proaches derived from it, the ETM and the recently developed European flaw assessment method SINTAP. The discussion of these approaches is restricted to the basic principles of each method. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.