Speaker’s name: Vice-chair of the Energy Institute AVIFF committee
Presentation title: Avoidance of Vibration-induced Fatigue Failures in High-Pressure Systems
Presentation abstract/summary:
Vibration induced failures occur across a wide range of process systems involving gas, multiphase and liquid flow. Several factors have led to the increasing incidence of vibration-related fatigue failures in piping systems both on offshore installations and in petrochemical plants. The most significant of these involve design of plants and pipelines with increased operating pressures and mass flow rates; greater use of thin-walled high strength high alloy pipework with reduced or no corrosion allowance (resulting in more flexible pipework); mal-operation in a way which was never intended in design; and late-life operation of depleted reservoirs, debottlenecking, and the relaxation of erosion velocity limits, resulting in higher flow velocities.
To address these problems, the first Edition of the Guidelines for the Avoidance of Vibration Induced Fatigue in Process Pipework (‘AVIFF guidelines’) was published in 2000. The third Edition scheduled for publication in 2026 provides an extensive update, intended to address technical developments since the publication of the current second Edition in 2008. It is the result of the Energy Institute’s ‘AVIFF guidelines review’ project S1923 which was commissioned in 2018. The presentation covers a selection from the detailed technical background to the third Edition.