RELIABILITY PREDICTION OF PIPES AND VALVES

摘要

A methodology for predicting the reliability of pipes and valves and for assessing the impact of testing and inspection policy on the safe life of a component is described. The method is based on the stress-strength interference model and enables a combination of physical models and engineering experience to be used to estimate means, variances and associated uncertainties in the life of a component. Particular attention is paid to modelling failures arising from underlying degradation processes. Bayesian routines are used to update the model parameters and to reduce uncertainties using inspection, monitoring or test data. The paper describes the principles of the method together with examples related to subsea gate valves and pipelines.