Infrastructure foundation Maintenance Management: Towards an integral optimization of the Operation and Maintenance phase.

Infrastructure foundation Maintenance Management: Towards an integral optimization of the Operation and Maintenance phase.

Van Steveninck, I.

Hertogh, M.J.C.M. (mentor)
Schoenmaker, R. (mentor)
Hobma, F.A.M. (mentor)
Post, M.L. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Structural Engineering

Construction Management and Engineering

2013-04-03

This research deals with the general problem of existing foundation of civil infrastructure in the Netherlands that is generally not included in the maintenance management cycle. This can lead in some cases to highly undesirable situations where a lot of time and money must be spent in order to provide a safe and available infrastructure facility again. The objective of this research is to determine whether the current situation of maintenance management of infrastructure facilities in the Netherlands can be optimized by balancing the performance, risk and cost. This is done by investigating whether specific maintenance management to the foundation of an infrastructure facility can contribute to this objective. This leads to the following research question: “Which kind of specific maintenance management focused on the infrastructure’s foundation can optimize the balance between performance, risk and cost?” This research is divided into two parts, the first part is a theoretical background research where the essential items of the optimization problem are outlined and an analysis, based on literature, performed on three real life cases. In the second part; the practical case study, the theoretical analysis is compared to the actual maintenance history of the cases. This evaluation compares the theoretically optimal maintenance strategy against the applied one. In the practical study also the occurred failure of the foundation is analysed where the main cause of the incident is studied. In this way the optimization obtained can be validated through the assessment of potential difference in the optimal and applied strategy. To answer the main research question first the individual research components are investigated. Performance can be described as the quality-level of functioning of a specific system or sub-system. A high required performance demands in general a higher level of maintenance management and the required performance of a facility differs per infrastructure facility. A risk is the chance of an undesirable event happening and can be expressed in the chance of occurrence multiplied with its consequence. Determining the maintenance management risk-based can be used to select cost effective and appropriate maintenance tasks and techniques. Maintenance involves costs. Currently there are many old and deteriorating objects in the Netherlands that should be maintained for the coming decades. The budget for these maintenance activities are decided upon in political surroundings. The specific maintenance management able to optimize the balance between performance, risk and cost, is interpreted as the maintenance management strategy. This strategy describes the physical nature of the maintenance activities. As optimization of this balance between performance, risk and cost is not a given fact, the balance between the three research criteria is assessed; when performance is maximized, and thus in general risks minimized, the costs are automatically maximized as a higher level of quality maintenance management and monitoring is more expensive. When the costs are minimized, the quality of the performance will be lower and the risk of failure higher. The main research question can be translated to the choice of the maintenance management strategy that is optimal considering the three balanced components. Within this research three case studies are used to determine this optimal balance and thus the kind of maintenance management suited for infrastructure foundation. As infrastructure foundation beholds many different physical forms not all infrastructure foundation can be seen as one and the same. But the analysed failures and consequences can be recognized for a larger domain as the cases have a decomposition of general components that civil infrastructure foundation consists of. In this research the attained domain are the three case studies used, whereas the intended domain is infrastructure foundation that has physiological similarities with the attained domain; sunken tunnel types with access ramps founded on tension piles, viaducts and bridges founded on a concrete pile foundation. In detail the research shows that the optimal maintenance strategy to be used for the intended infrastructure foundation would be preventive of nature, in contrast to the current situation where only a corrective strategy is applied. The research shows that the optimal balance is to mitigate the socially unacceptable risks by preventive tasks and monitoring actions in order to prevent and/ or monitor failure. The level of prevention of these tasks and actions are initially determined by the availability of data. Thus a significant aspect of attention is the importance of object data availability.

infrastructuur
beheer en onderhoud
civiele techniek
fundatie
risico analyse
(RCM) Reliability Centred Maintenance
(FMECA) Failure Mode and Critical Effect Analysis
optimalisatie

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:06859c8d-a6a0-4002-9240-290f7206bbf2

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Van Steveninck, I.