A finite element program for on-line life assessment of critical plant components

An on-line structural safety evaluation system (BOSSES) has been developed over the years at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), India, which is capable of assessing the damage due to creep and fatigue in critical plant components. The system acquires plant transients in real time and processes them to evaluate the stress, temperature and damage distribution in the components and provides information through a visual module. The aim of the paper is to briefly describe the details of the damage assessment methodology adopted by BOSSES with some case studies of real life plant components.