I work for the global engineering consultancy Quest Integrity Group (Quest Integrity), based in their office in the Gold Coast, Australia. Quest Integrity specializes in the development and delivery of advanced inspection, engineering assessment services and software products, throughout the pipeline, refining, chemical, syngas and power industries. More details about the services and products Quest Integrity provides can be found on the website: Quest Integrity Group
I am part of the Advanced Engineering group, which focuses on Fitness-for-Service and Remaining Life assessments, Structural Integrity analysis, and failure investigations. In my role I am responsible for modelling and analyzing stationary/rotating components in Oil & Gas, Power and Process industries for structural integrity, following the guidelines given in standards such as API 579, BS7910 and British Energy R5.
The predominant projects I work on involve:
– conducting remaining life assessments for high temperature components susceptible to creep and fatigue interactions.
– calculating critical flaw sizes and crack growth rates to determine optimum non-destructive inspection intervals.
– evaluating manufacturing/in-service defects using the Fitness-for-Service approach to minimize unplanned down-time.
Some of the specific projects I’ve worked recently are:
- Structural Integrity assessment of a gas turbine compressor disc.
- Creep crack growth failure investigation of a heat exchanger at a petrochemical plant.
- Strain estimation and fatigue life assessment of a number of dents in a natural gas pipeline, using data collected from an In Line Inspection (ILI).
- Local Thinning Analysis of a molecular sieve vessel at a gas processing plant.
- Creep crack growth failure investigation of a superheater at a coal fired power station.
- Fitness-for-Service assessment of an absorber vessel defect.
- Stress analysis of Locally Thinned Areas (LTAs) in a methanol converter.
- Structural Integrity assessment of a main inlet valve at a hydroelectric power station.