Simplified Method for Estimation of Mean Residual Life of Rubble-mound Breakwaters

Abstract

A simplified model using the lifetime distribution has been presented to estimate the Mean Residual Life (MRL) of rubble-mound breakwaters, which is not like a stochastic process model based on time-dependent history data to the cumulative damage progress of rubble-mound breakwaters. The parameters involved in the lifetime distribution can be easily estimated by using the upper and lower limits of lifetime and their likelihood that made a judgement by several experts taking account of the initial design lifetime, the past sequences of loads, and others. The simplified model presented in this paper has been applied to the rubble-mound breakwater with TTP armor layer. Wiener Process (WP)-based stochastic model also has been applied together with Monte-Carlo Simulation (MCS) technique to the breakwater of the same condition having time-dependent cumulative damage to TTP armor layer. From the comparison of lifetime distribution obtained from each models including Mean Time To Failure (MTTF), it has found that the lifetime distributions of rubble-mound breakwater can be very satisfactorily fitted by log-normal distribution for all types of cumulative damage progresses, such as exponential, linear, and logarithmic deterioration which are feasible in the real situations. Finally, the MRL of rubble-mound breakwaters estimated by the simplified model presented in this paper have been compared with those by WP stochastic process. It can be shown that results of the presented simplified model have been identical with those of WP stochastic process until any ages in the range of MTT F regardless of the deterioration types. However, a little of differences have been seen at the ages in the neighborhood of MTTF, specially, for the linear and logarithmic deterioration of cumulative damages. For the accurate estimation of MRL of harbor structures, it may be desirable that the stochastic processes should be used to consider properly time-dependent uncertainties of damage deterioration. Nevertheless, the simplified model presented in this paper can be useful in the building of the MRL-based preventive maintenance planning for several kinds of harbor structures, because of which is not needed timedependent history data about the damage deterioration of structures as mentioned above.