Keyword: «limiting state»
The paper explores the problems of maintaining the reliability of steel structures used in hazardous industrial facilities. It aims to introduce a new parameter for the rapid assessment of structural changes in the material of critical structures. It developed a method for rapid assessment of structural changes in the material of critical structures using a non-destructive method based on parameters that are sensitive to degradative changes in structure. It establishes a correlation between speed of sound and toughness for given states of the pipe metal, based on which the method was developed. It substantiates the applicability of these parameters to assess the degree of degradation. A method is proposed for estimating the residual service life of metal in a trunk gas pipeline by changing the speed of sound.