Industrial safety of pressure vessels - Structural integrity point of view

Abstract

This paper presents different aspects of pressure vessel safety in the scope of industrial safety, focused to the chemical industry. Quality assurance, including application of PED97/23 has been analysed first, followed shortly by the risk assessment and in details by the structural integrity approach, which has been illustrated with three case studies. One important conclusion, following such an approach, is that so-called water proof testing can actually jeopardize integrity of a pressure vessel instead of proving it.