Industries

Zencrack can be applied in any industry in which knowledge of crack behaviour, crack growth prediction and residual life calculation are important issues, e.g.:

• aerospace
• nuclear
• manufacturing
• offshore
• power generation.

Assessments

Within any of these industries, a fracture mechanics analysis may be used in many different situations, e.g.

• post-failure and accident investigations
• forensic studies
• parametric studies of different crack sizes in a component
• leak before break studies
• design of experiments
• generation of failure assessment diagrams
• determination of -
  • the residual life of a component with a known flaw size and load history
  • the maximum crack size for a given life
  • NDT inspection periods
  • repair scenarios
  • threshold crack size for a given cyclic load.

Applications

On a task-based or component level the potential use of the software is almost unlimited. Typical applications include:

• assessing residual life
• life extension
• damage tolerance assessment
• reliability analysis
• development of new materials
• elastic and plastic analysis to show interaction between ductile and brittle failure (i.e. failure assessment diagram methodology)
• engine disks and blades and their dovetail connections
• power generation components, e.g. high pressure waterbox
• pipeline defects and connections, e.g. tee, sweepolet connections
• rail tracks
• welded connections
• rubber components
• high temperature creep Ct integral evaluation
• adhesive bonded patch repairs
• maintenance scheduling.