New high-resolution non-destructive methods for assessment of early damage in advanced welded steels for high-temperature applications with extended life

The EARLY project aims to develop and validate reliable methods to identify and characterise early damage that will emerge by creep, creep-fatigue and oxidation of welded advanced steels for service at high temperatures. The project will contribute to (i) facilitating early justified life prediction and consequently potential life extension for hot end components of power and process plants, and (ii) optimal planning of operation and maintenance of plants subjected to severe high temperature service. The project will focus on evaluating innovative multiphysics inspection methods to identify early damage and on methods to utilise the information from this damage. The expected results encompass (i) innovative high-resolution and highly-sensitive inspection methods to reliably detect, localize and characterise early multi-scale damage of interest, and (ii) methods and applications to reliably model and predict life for components with early damage.