Analytic Stress (ASRI) made a commitment to quality, safety and its customers when the company began in 1979. In its formative years, ASRI designed resistance heat treating equipment specifically for the rigors of the pipeline industry. This ability to develop equipment needed by different industries has fueled ASRI’s growth.
As the company expanded over the years, so did the types of work ASRI encountered. And as the work changed, the company grew through that change. That culture has propelled ASRI from its Lafayette, La., head office to nine additional offices located throughout the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard.
More than 30 years after its inception, ASRI continues to provide all facets of electrical resistance and fuel-fired heat treating services to the refining, petrochemical, power generation, pulp and paper, pipeline and offshore industries.
Last November, ASRI added induction heating to its services. The company opened an office in Middlesex, N.J., and welcomed industry veterans Bob Lake and Dan Ciarlariello to the team. Combined, Lake and Ciarlariello brought more than 50 years of related heat treating and induction experience to the newly formed Induction Division.
“Adding the induction technology complements ASRI’s capabilities with the company already providing resistance heating and gas-fired combustion heating technologies,” Lake said. “At the end of the day, heat is heat. It’s just that different methods are best suited for different applications.
“Induction heating uses magnetic fields to transfer power from an induction coil to a work piece. That work piece is creating heat within the body of that component due to electrical current flow in the part itself. Induction heating has been around a long time but, fairly recently, it became an industry standard in the power generation industry.”
According to Lake, a benefit of induction heating is the technology allows a very fast rate of heating, without affecting adjacent components in most cases.
“The benefit of induction heating is you can get a very large amount of power into a very small area,” he said. “It allows rapid thermal expansion in the item being heated before the heat transfers into the work piece it’s fit onto. We’re getting a significant Delta T between the two pieces, which allows it to expand and be easily removed. This method also allows for very uniform heating when done correctly.”
The feedback on induction heating has been very positive, Lake said.
“Induction heating is far superior to the old methods of heating for certain applications and has become an industry standard for things like thermal expansion of shrunk fit components and turbine bolt heating,” he said. “We have taken existing equipment technology and made it state of the art. Our knowledge and experience with induction equipment has allowed ASRI to customize it to meet the needs of our customers.”
Recent induction heating successes include a turbine rotor heating project for a major turbine OEM in the northeast United States.
“We utilized seven induction machines on the same work piece and simulated the turbines’ operating temperatures for testing purposes,” Lake said. “That was a large undertaking. The turbine rotor is rolling while it’s being heated. You can’t do it with any other conventional means.
“We’re also performing several turbine bolt heating projects, which involve a faster means of elongating the bolting for disassembly and reassembly. For turbine bolt heating jobs, saving time is the No. 1 benefit. You’re typically knocking days off of an outage by utilizing turbine bolt heating technology.”
Heat treating by heat treating experts. Contact Analytic Stress today.
For more information, visit www.analyticstress.com or call (337) 237-8790.
