FOCUS
Third party certification
contractor/applicator under a recognised third party certification scheme is employed to install fire protection systems.
Regular inspection is also crucial to identify
deterioration or damage, so that remedial work can be carried out promptly to maintain a continued level of protection. It is especially critical in cryogenic applications, as the leakage might not lead to a fire, but cracks in the coating can form that will compromise the structural integrity for future damage against fire and explosions.
Routine risk assessments can normally identify and assess the extent of any damage. This requires a robust risk management system which covers identification of the fire safety element; determination of the criticality of each element; assessment of each anomaly noted; risk assessment; and allocation of urgency rating for remedial works. Anomalies in the fire safety system identified by inspections should be repaired based on the risk assessment specific to the location and evaluation of the damage. In the hydrocarbon industry, accidents
such as fire and explosion, and deterioration damage in the case of LNG leakage, can lead to structural integrity failures. Therefore, legislation and guidance in many parts of the world impose increasingly strict requirements on life safety products such as fire protection. The level of fire safety associated with each facility is normally achieved as a result of various fire safety standards or codes. In general, prescriptive standards or codes adequately serve the needs of regulators or approval authorities in the vast majority of traditional oil and gas constructions.
34 MARCH 2018
www.frmjournal.com
However, a test method has yet to be
developed which captures the combined cryogenic and fire exposure that is likely to occur in the current trend of developments in the hydrocarbon industry. Without such a rigorous testing methodology, the physical behaviour of the exposure scenario – cryogenic leakage followed by a fire – is under represented by standalone tests such as the jet fire and separate cryogenic exposure tests. The fire/cryogenic testing standards do
not explicitly address the concerns about the safety of life or properties over the full lifetime of a structure. Over time, a less conventional ‘engineering’ approach has increasingly been adopted in modern designs, bringing a challenge to the more fundamental fire safety designs.
Combined testing
When we look at state of the art developments, the need to develop a combined cryogenic/ fire testing method becomes even more apparent. One such research effort is the use of computer models to obtain a quantification of the structural integrity during combined fire/ cryogenic scenarios. Describing the physical processes that occur during the exposure and under the relevant demanding environments is challenging. The successful implementation has the added benefit of being able to evaluate the structural integrity of steel structures by implementing a material damage model, and to predict failure or the residual strength
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