An overview of the European flaw assessment procedure SINTAP and its validation

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.