Abstract
The strategies of maintenance and operation are usually established based on the number of flaws and their size distribution obtained from nondestructive inspection in order to preserve safety of the plant. But non destructive inspection results are different from the physical flaws which really exist in the equipments. In case of a single inspection, it is easy to estimate the number of physical flaws using the POD curve. However, we may be faced with some difficulties in obtaining the number of physical flaws from the periodic in-service non destructive inspection data. In this study a simple method for estimating the number of physical flaws from periodic in-service nondestructive inspection data was proposed. In order to obtain the flaw growth history, the flaw growth was simulated using the Monte Carlo method and the flaw size and the corresponding POD value were obtained for each flaw at each periodic inspection time. The flaw growth rate used in the simulation was statistically calculated from the in-service inspection data. By repeating the simulation numerous flaw growth data could be generated and the effective POD curve was obtained as a function of flaw size. From the effective POD curve the number of physical flaws was obtained. The usefulness and convenience of the proposed method was evaluated from several applications and satisfactory results were obtained.
