Abstract
Pressure tests of pressure vessels and piping involve the potential danger of brittle fracture. Especially, pneumatic pressure tests involve the hazard of releasing energy stored in compressed gas. Engineers and designers relating to the pressure facilities have been taking care to minimize the chance of fracture during the pressure tests. The care must be taken into account in materials selection, design, welding and heat treatment, inspection and test procedure. However, the fracture accident could not be eradicated for a long time. Sometimes, this resulted in a fatal accident. It is important to wake the best effort to prevent the accident itself. Considering the difficulty of eradication of the accident, it is also important to protect the human lives during pressure tests.
In this paper, several improvements were proposed in order to protect the human lives. The main points are the selection of test method (hydrostatic or pneumatic?) , pressure measurement, inspection during pressure test and exclusion zone. Some of these require the revision of laws, codes or standards.
