Development of a new approach to establish inspection frequency in a RBI assessment

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2010

Authors

Sobral, J (Author) Other; Luis Andrade Ferreira (Author) FEUP

Conference proceedings International

Title: Reliability, Risk and Safety: Back to the Future

Pages: 1446-1452

European Safety and Reliability Annual Conference: Reliability, Risk and Safety: Back to the Future, ESREL 2010

Rhodes, 5 September 2010 through 9 September 2010

Indexing

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-008-43D

Abstract (EN): The American Petroleum Institute (API) initiated in 1983 a project named Risk Based Inspection (RBI). As a risk methodology, RBI is used as the basis for prioritizing and managing the efforts of an inspection program. A RBI program allows the shift of inspection and maintenance resources to provide a higher level of coverage on the high risk items and an appropriate effort on lower risk equipment. The main goal of RBI is to increase equipments availability while improving or maintaining the same level of risk. In a petrochemical facility failure is often related to loss of containment caused by deterioration and one of the steps of RBI methodology is the identification of credible deteriorating mechanisms and failure modes. Damage mechanisms include corrosion, cracking, mechanical and metallurgical damage. Failure modes identify how the damaged component will fail (e.g. leakage by rupture). The probability of failure for each situation is a hard job because several deteriorating mechanisms and failure modes can be present in a particular item at the same time and failure data could be from a given mixed population representing several failure modes. This probability together with the individual consequences of failure leads to a certain risk. This work shows an approach to determine inspection frequencies in a RBI process based on risk and fundamentally on the quantification of probability of failure, by some assumptions in a structured decision making basis. This methodology allows an optimization of inspection intervals deciding when the first inspection must be performed as well as subsequent intervals of inspection. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific