Risk assessment based on fault tree analysis for damaged pipe repair during operation in petrochemical plant

Abstract

In petrochemical plant, the in-operation repairing is usually a repairing strategy with pressured inoperation repairing for avoiding huge economic losses caused by unplanned shutdown when some slight local leakage happens in pipes. This paper studies the effects of repairing strategies on the failure probability of the pipe systems in process industries based on the time-average fault tree approach, especially the in-operation repairing strategies including pressured in-operation repairing activities. The fault tree model can predict the effect of different repairing plans on the pipe failure probability, which is significant to the optimization of the repairing plans. At first pipes are distinguished into four states in this model, i.e., successive state, flaw state, leakage state and failure state. Then the fault tree approach, which is usually applied in the studies of dynamic equipment, is adopted to model the pipe failure. Moreover, the effect of pressured in-operation repairing is also considered in the model. In addition, this paper proposes a series of time-average parameters of the fault tree model, all of which are used to calculate node parameters of the fault tree model. At last, a practical case is calculated based on the fault tree model in a repairing activity of pipe thinning.