Stresses and deflections are measured and compared to allowables. Past work has included offshore lattice and box boom cranes, truck cranes, aerial personnel devices, and special purpose units. Other similar work has been done on all types of oil industry structures such as drilling derricks and masts, towers, and offshore drilling rigs. Skirt attachments and circumferential seams crack and distort after several thousand cycles. In such cases, High Temperature Strain Gages and Thermocouples are installed and recorded for hundreds of cycles.
Instrumentation is installed with complete intrinsic safety compliance.
The information gathered is used to evaluate the accumulation of fatigue damage and evaluate remaining life. New vessels have been designed to account for Low Cycle Fatigue based on these measurements. SES has provided long term monitoring of several of these units concerning large diameter piping that connects the reactor and regenerator. Sensors typically used are strain gages, thermocouples, displacement transducers, and pressure transducers. One application was a short term monitoring project during the unit Turn-Around.