A three-year, European project structural integrity assessment procedures f
or European industry (SINTAP) was completed in March 1999. The project invo
lved analytical, numerical and experimental work on a number of fracture me
chanics topics. The main output was a flaw assessment procedure, which shou
ld form the basis of a future European standard. This paper describes the S
INTAP procedure, illustrating how the output may be presented in terms of e
ither a crack driving force (CDF) or a failure assessment diagram (FAD). No
vel features of the SINTAP work are then described and, finally, numerical
and experimental validation of various parts of the procedure is summarised
. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.