Risk-based inspection (RBI) is an approach for ranking the priority of inspection and maintenance according to an assessed risk to the component or system integrity. One key aspect of any RBI program is to carefully select the locations for non-destructive examination (NDE) that are most susceptible to damage, according to the component's design and past and projected operating mode, while considering the resources and time available during an upcoming inspection.
By design, ASME pressure parts (piping and boilers) are intended to be inspected at regular intervals. While many damage mechanisms can be detected visually, others are best discovered with various NDE methods, in particular:
NDE contractors are expensive and usually don’t know your plant or process well enough to know which components are most at-risk for degradation and wear. If they inspect in the wrong places (i.e. where the rate of wear/damage is not highest), they’ll end up giving a false sense of security.
Optimised NDE means carefully selecting the locations that are most susceptible to damage, according to your components’ design and the way they are operated. Tetra Engineering has the requisite multi-disciplinary experience and tools (thermal simulation, life assessment, structural calculations….) in-house to help you get the most out of your NDE campaigns, by providing pre-outage planning, on-site supervision and post-inspection review.
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Idle periods are getting longer as plants move to cycling or standby, and corrosion during layup can do serious damage. Pitting can penetrate a tube wall in a few weeks. In the October 2026 issue of Modern Power Systems, Misha Gadher and James Malloy of Tetra Engineering Europe compare five preservation methods and show how one coastal combined cycle plant matched each method to each system for a six-month shutdown.
