Effect of Deterioration Models in the Performance of Infrastructure Systems

Abstract eng:
Modeling degradation of structures and infrastructure systems is essential for lifecycle cost analysis and reliability estimations. In practice, modeling degradation can be used to: (1) estimate the probability that the capacity of the system falls below a pre-specified performance threshold level; (2) compute the average structure's availability; and (3) estimate the capacity of the system at a given time t. Information from degradation models can also be used for developing fragility curves and making decisions about design and operation variables. Although many structural degradationmodels have been proposed, a comprehensive degradationmodel should take into consideration that: 1) structural deterioration is a combination of both progressive and sudden damaging events; 2) the structure's damage space is not discrete; 3) there is a significant uncertainty in estimating the system state at at given point in time and after an intervention (i.e., after maintenance or failure); and 4) the selection of acceptable operational and failure thresholds is both difficult and critical for decision making. The objective of this paper is to present a brief overview of the structural degradation problem, the existing degradation models and the parameters that control the process. The paper also presents the results of a parametric analysis that emphasizes the sensitivity of the results to the modeling assumptions. The results highlight the importance of selecting the appropriate model for the problem at hand and the need for collecting field data.

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