A BAYESIAN QUANTITATIVE NONDESTRUCTIVE EVALUATION (QNDE) APPROACH TO ESTIMATING REMAINING LIFE OF AGING PRESSURE VESSELS AND PIPING

摘要

In this paper, we use a Bayesian quantitative nondestructive evaluation (QNDE) approach to estimating the remaining life of aging structures and components. Our approach depends on in-situ NDE measurements of detectable crack lengths and crack growth rates in a multi-crack region of an aging component as a basis for estimating the mean and standard deviation of its remaining life. We introduce a general theory of crack growth involving multiple cracks such that the mean and standard deviation of the initial crack lengths can be directly estimated from NDE-measured crack length data over a period of several inspection intervals. A numerical example using synthetic NDE data for high strength steels is presented to illustrate this new methodology.