High Temperature and Creep Assessments

Components such as heater tubes, steam and catalytic reformers, thin/thick wall reactors, and Fluid Catalytic Cracking Units (FCCU) can experience a combination of high temperature, stress, and long exposure that results in material degradation from the process referred to as creep.

High-temperature damage can be caused by numerous factors including:

At Stress Engineering Services, we advocate a comprehensive “cradle to grave” approach to life management of components in the creep environment. Our methodology utilizes a vital combination of creep life calculations, inspection, microscopic examination, measurement, predictive modeling, and testing.

Predictive Modeling
In many cases, such as new design or remediation of chronic operating issues, computer modeling of the flow and temperature properties is the only way to accurately address the thermal behavior of the system. We perform computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis of heaters to address issues such as heat transfer prediction, burner-to-burner interaction evaluation, flame impingement evaluation, improvements in flame shape and NO_x performance.

High-Temperature Creep Testing
Our creep testing laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio is equipped with 80 fully instrumented creep machines ranging in capacity from 500 lbs. up to 100,000 lbs. Engineering materials at test temperatures up to 2200°F can be accommodated. Capabilities include standard creep testing, special purpose creep tests using nonstandard specimens for collecting information on samples extracted from process equipment in service, and testing subcomponents such as weldments.

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