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ERIN Engineering and Research, Inc. (ERIN), an SKF Group Company, developed the MARKOVPlus™ software to advance analysis methodologies for Risk Informed Inservice Inspection (RISI) of piping. The MARKOVPlus™ workstation interactions between degradation mechanisms and the inspection, detection, and repair strategies that can reduce the probability that failures occur or that failures will progress to ruptures. The model consists of four states of a pipe segment or element (e.g., a weld or section of pipe) reflecting the progressive stages of pipe failure mechanisms: the development of flaws or detectable damage, the occurrence of leaks, and the occurrence of pipe ruptures. The Markov models developed for pipe ruptures are used to develop differential equations for the time dependent state probabilities associated with the model. The solution of these differential equations is obtained to compute the time dependent probability that the pipe segment in questions is in each state. The MARKOVPlus workstation represents a significant improvement over traditional RISI approaches. Simple analysis using piping element failure rates typically applied for RISI reflects indeterminate impacts of previous inspection programs and if there are desired changes to these programs, such changes may render the previous failure rate estimates invalid. Other approaches making use of probabilistic fracture mechanics models to predict crack initiation and growth reflect our understanding of the physical processes of fracture mechanics but to date have no been fully benchmarked against service experience. The MARKOVPlus™ workstation code provides an innovative and practical solution for RISI. |
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