Lifespan and ageing of industrial plant components
The XPECTION project has created a prototype that integrates the measuring and monitoring of the residual lifetime of high temperature plant components. This real structure analysis with on site X-ray diffraction has been merged with an inspection and maintenance infrastructure. It is an interdisciplinary approach which spanned various fields of research for a novel ageing characterisation method. It was necessary to measure both the ageing state of a material and the remnant lifetime of the component. Therefore a correlation of the two-dimensional x-ray diffraction (2D-XRD) patterns with the mechanical properties of the materials was needed. In light of this, a database was designed and XpectionTool was then applied to the data collected. The database has the potential for lifetime assessment by real structure analysis of materials in the plant components on site and can offer information about grain coarsening and texture changes. The novel aspect of Xpection is that it can assess the ageing state and remnant lifetime prior to the appearance of cracks. Some potential end users include fossil electric power generation and petro-chemical industries as well as aircraft manufacturing and maintenance and the pulp and paper industry.
