design & integrity

EWI offers design and integrity services to demonstrate if a joined structure can fully meet all the demands placed on it. These capabilities enable us to answering questions like “Can it pass the qualification tests?”, “Can it achieve the desired lifetime?”, and “What welding imperfections can be tolerated?”.

EWI engineers bring experience, industrial familiarity and extensive knowledge of available tools to bear on the assessment of structural joints. Our approach focuses on the joint areas first, rather than trying to extrapolate from other regions of the structure.

We can provide a general design review on fitness for the service of a specific joined component. A review may begin with the design purpose, and expand to include computational modeling and analysis of joined materials and specific joining processes.

EWI applies finite element analysis methods to a wide variety of structural assessments, such as thermal analysis, stress assessment, buckling determination, and vibration assessment. Our special focus on welding and joining allows us to apply these assessment methods for residual stress management, distortion control, and assessments of cracked structures. We also offer integrated weld modeling, where the welding process is included with weld pool modeling, and modeling of microstructure formation during welding and cooling.

EWI performs structural integrity assessments, demonstrating that joined structures can withstand cracks and other flaws. We perform these assessments with methods that can assess fracture from a single load cycle and fatigue from many cycles. These assessments can start from standard methods, from available test data, or from data developed in EWI’s own laboratory testing.