TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 642/1998
A Muhammed
Background
It is known that proof testing of structural components can have beneficial effects on subsequent performance as well as demonstrating their integrity. Work in this area has been of considerable interest at TWI with several Core Research Programmes (CRP) carried out over the years. The results of these TWI projects have been widely published and are referenced at various points in this report.
Several reviews have been conducted on the benefits of warm prestressing (WPS). However, the effects of subcritical crack extension and repeated prestressing on the WPS benefit remain unclear. Recent work in these areas is presented.
This work was also aimed at making recommendations for including prior overload effects in structural integrity assessment procedures to be developed under the SINTAP European project. A review of existing methods was necessary in order to achieve this objective.