Fitness for service assessment of tubular structures using the FITNET FFS Procedure

The European Fitness for Service Network has developed a unified European procedure for the structural integrity assessment called FITNET Fitness For Service (FFS) Procedure, which has been designed to assess the structural integrity of any metallic welded or non-welded structures transmitting loads. In particular, it embodies techniques for dealing with defects known (or postulated) to be present in a structure, together with the possible growth of such defects by a range of mechanisms and the assessment techniques required to evaluate the failure risk. It probably constitutes the most up-to-date procedure in the field. Consequently, the FITNET FFS Procedure provides methodologies for the assessment of a wide variety of structures (i.e., bridges, aircrafts, ship hulls, shafts, pipelines, vessels⋯) and conditions (i.e., from low to high temperatures, static vs. dynamic loads, inert vs. aggressive environments, etc). The aim of this paper is to provide a clear and comprehensive view of the procedure for its specific application to tubular structures.