A Structural Integrity Procedure Arising from the SINTAP Project

摘要

SINTAP (Structural INTegritv Assessment Procedure) was a multidisciplinary collaborative project, part-funded by the European Union, with the aim of devising a unified procedure for such assessments, offering a range of assessment routes giving it maximum applicability, from the smallest organisation to major industrial users. The project commenced in April 1996 and was completed in April 1999. Although many such methods did and do exist, most have conflicting approaches, unspecified levels of empiricism or do not fully reflect the performance of modem materials or the current state of knowledge. SINTAP covered both modelling and experimental work and a large element of the project was concerned with the transfer of knowledge and data between industries and scientific organisations together with its compilation and interpretation to provide the required solutions. The culmination of this work is a procedure which is applicable to a wide cross section of users because of its ability to offer routes of varying complexity, reflecting data quality and the scope for a final interpretation reflecting the preference of the user.