Because so many of the applications where valves are used are sensitive to the danger of fire and explosion, fire testing is a critical part of the process of designing the right valves. Much has occurred in the world of fire testing standards over the last 30-40 years.

The last 25 years have seen standards created and implemented to increase the quality and repeatability of valves procured from low-cost manufacturing sources around the world. As part of the process, potential sellers into the U.S. market have reportedly spent millions of dollars improving facilities and processes. But what’s the consensus: has it worked?

Shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STOs) play a major role in plant safety, performance, reliability and profitability. However, they take time and resources.

A focus on having the proper specification, design and integration of final elements is key in the actuation of valves for the process industry. As users collect more data through testing methods, they are discovering that final element assemblies are not always performing reliably throughout their mission time. For example, two observed failures are torque/force that is insufficient to move the valve to the safe state and mechanical failure of final element components from stress beyond the element’s ultimate strength. These two failure modes are evidence of a lack of robustness in the current process used to specify and design integrated final element assemblies.