Steel structures used in various chemical plants have been liable to suffer such kinds of damage as reduction of wallthickness by corrosion, degrading of notch toughness by various precipitation embrittlement, or crack caused by creep, thermal fatigue, reheating, hydrogen attack, stress corrosion etc under severer envioronmental condition involving high temperature, high partial pressure of hydrogen at elevated temperature, corrosive atmosphere, and so on It is need for securing the safety of chemical plants to detect, investigate and evaluate such damage mentioned above, and to establish adequately the preventive counter-measures. In this paper, author intended to introduce typical envioronmental damage which occurs frequently in chemical plants, to explain the cause of occurrence and recent status of preventive measures.
Moreover, author described the latest technical level for detection and evaluation methods of deterioration, or damage of material concerned including nondestructive examination.

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