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

摘要

A three-year, European project structural integrity assessment procedures for European industry (SINTAP) was completed in March 1999. The project involved analytical, numerical and experimental work on a number of fracture mechanics topics. The main output was a flaw assessment procedure, which should form the basis of a future European standard. This paper describes the SINTAP procedure, illustrating how the output may be presented in terms of either a crack driving force (CDF) or a failure assessment diagram (FAD). Novel features of the SINTAP work are then described and, finally, numerical and experimental validation of various parts of the procedure is summarised.