A co-operative European project on Structural Integrity Assessment Procedures for European Industry (SINTAP) commenced in 1996. The project involved participants from nine European countries. Following a review of existing fitness-for-purpose assessment procedures, and research on a selective number of topics, SINTAP was completed in 1999 with the production of a new flaw assessment procedure. This paper describes some of the developments made during the SINTAP project. Progress in the areas of fracture toughness estimation for ferritic steels in the ductile-to-brittle transition region, compatibility of failure assessment diagram (FAD) and crack driving force (CDF) methods, and allowance for strength mismatch effects are highlighted. Then, an overview of the SINTAP procedure, the various levels of analysis within it and the hierarchical nature of these levels, is presented. Building on the SINTAP project and other developments in fracture assessment methods, a major new revision (Revision 4) has recently been produced to the R6 defect assessment procedure maintained by the UK nuclear power industry. The last major revision to R6 was in 1986 although there have been a significant number of additions to the document since that time. The structure of R6 Revision 4 is based on that of the SINTAP procedure and consists of five chapters dealing with: basic procedures; inputs to basic procedures; alternative approaches, compendia; and, validation. Furthermore, some new FADs have been introduced in R6 Revision 4. These are also based on SINTAP developments. This paper describes the contents of R6 Revision 4 and in particular the new features introduced in this major revision to the document. In addition to the SINTAP and R6 developments, there has recently been a number of developments worldwide in fracture assessments codes. These include British Standards developments leading to the British Standards Guide BS7910 which replaces the Published Document PD6493, American Petroleum Institute developments leading to API579, developments leading to the French Nuclear Code RSE-M and developments by the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME). These worldwide code developments are summarised. Finally, the paper discusses progress within Europe towards production of a European standard for fitness-for-purpose assessments.
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