Reliability-based inspection and maintenance planning of a nuclear feeder piping system. (August 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bismut, Elizabeth; Pandey, Mahesh D.; Straub, Daniel
• Is Part Of: Reliability engineering & system safety. Volume 224(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-08
• Subjects: Maintenance -- Flow accelerated corrosion -- Reliability-based planning; Reliability (Engineering) -- Periodicals; System safety -- Periodicals; Industrial safety -- Periodicals; Fiabilité -- Périodiques; Sécurité des systèmes -- Périodiques; Sécurité du travail -- Périodiques; 620.00452
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2022.108521
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0951-8320

Abstract

Abstract: Inspection and maintenance (I&M) is essential to ensure the integrity of feeder pipes, which are parts of the primary heat transport system in a nuclear power plant. The pipes are subject to flow accelerated corrosion (FAC), which can compromise the integrity of the piping system and lead to high repair costs. We explore the opportunity for improving I&M strategies while ensuring that the system still maintains an acceptable level of reliability. To this aim, a reliability-based planning framework is proposed, in which every pipe in the system meets the minimum thickness requirement at a specified annual probability. With this planning framework we can a) evaluate the performance of any I&M strategy constrained to a fixed reliability criterion, without requiring this strategy to be specifically designed for such a criterion; and b) find an I&M strategy optimized for this reliability level using a heuristic description of the strategy space. We demonstrate the framework with a case study, where the wall thinning due to FAC is modeled as a Gamma process with uncertain parameters. We compare the expected life-cycle cost of multiple strategies for I&M of a feeder system with 480 pipes. The proposed approach is compared with an I&M strategy currently used by the industry, which highlights the efficiency of the proposed optimization method. Highlights: Reliability-based inspection and maintenance (I&M) of nuclear piping systems. Performance assessment of any I&M strategy under a fixed reliability constraint. Heuristic description of I&M rules for optimal strategy at given reliability level. Framework demonstrated on a 480-pipe system subject to flow accelerated corrosion. Lower strategy cost when including reliability computations in the decision process.