Abstract
Inspection-based maintenance strategies can provide an efficient alternative for ageing civil engineering components subjected to ageing and degradation. The technical and/or economic efficiency of such strategies depends on many factors, such as the mechanisms involved in the loss of performance; the availability, cost and efficiency of inspection techniques; the relation between what can be measured through inspections and the level of performance of the structure; the level of required serviceability of the structure; and the direct and indirect economic losses due to a reduction in the performance of a structure. On this basis, it is studied here, using Monte Carlo simulations, the benefits and limitations of an inspection-based maintenance strategy. The quality of the inspection technique is analysed in terms of its sensitivity to defects in their initial stage of development, and on its discriminant ability (detection of a real defect, while avoiding false alarms). This study is carried out with ageing characteristics, inspection models and cost assumptions that can cover a wide field of ageing assets. The influence of several factors is highlighted to see how they influence optimal strategies; a focus is given on the quality of inspections and on the allowable probability of failure.
Highlights
Many of the structures that were built around the 1960s are coming to the end of their service lives and are showing significant signs of deterioration
Failure must not be understood as structural failure, but from a more general point of view it is the fact that a limit state is reached, as it will be discussed at section 4.3
It can be seen that changing the pFA value has two adverse consequences in terms of total cost: a more severe probability of failure decreases the number of failures when it increases the number of repairs
Summary
Many of the structures that were built around the 1960s are coming to the end of their service lives and are showing significant signs of deterioration. Monitoring and inspections are key aspects in this process The information from these tests can be used to update deterioration models and to derive the optimal economic maintenance strategy for the remaining lifetime of the structure. MEDACHS is dedicated to the optimisation of the service life of structures in marine environments Both analytical analysis and Monte Carlo simulations use deterioration models, and information supplied from inspections, to determine the most suitable inspection method along with the optimum inspection period, for different deterioration rates. The models that are used to determine the optimum maintenance management strategy are just estimations that predict how the structure will behave over time Since these models include uncertainty, it can be useful to carry out regular inspections to ensure that the structure is behaving as predicted, or to detect possible problems. Where X represents crack presence, and D(X) represents the detection of a crack
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
