• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.158-169
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• 2019

A probabilistic model that can predict the residual useful lifetime of structure is formulated by using the gamma process which is one of the stochastic processes. The formulated stochastic model can take into account both the sampling uncertainty associated with damages measured up to now and the temporal uncertainty of cumulative damage over time. A method estimating several parameters of stochastic model is additionally proposed by introducing of the least square method and the method of moments, so that the age of a structure, the operational environment, and the evolution of damage with time can be considered. Some features related to the residual useful lifetime are firstly investigated into through the sensitivity analysis on parameters under a simple setting of single damage data measured at the current age. The stochastic model are then applied to the rubble-mound breakwater straightforwardly. The parameters of gamma process can be estimated for several experimental data on the damage processes of armor rocks of rubble-mound breakwater. The expected damage levels over time, which are numerically simulated with the estimated parameters, are in very good agreement with those from the flume testing. It has been found from various numerical calculations that the probabilities exceeding the failure limit are converged to the constraint that the model must be satisfied after lasting for a long time from now. Meanwhile, the expected residual useful lifetimes evaluated from the failure probabilities are seen to be different with respect to the behavior of damage history. As the coefficient of variation of cumulative damage is becoming large, in particular, it has been shown that the expected residual useful lifetimes have significant discrepancies from those of the deterministic regression model. This is mainly due to the effect of sampling and temporal uncertainties associated with damage, by which the first time to failure tends to be widely distributed. Therefore, the stochastic model presented in this paper for predicting the residual useful lifetime of structure can properly implement the probabilistic assessment on current damage state of structure as well as take account of the temporal uncertainty of future cumulative damage.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.37-45
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• 2022

A simplified model using the lifetime distribution has been presented to estimate the Mean Residual Life (MRL) of rubble-mound breakwaters, which is not like a stochastic process model based on time-dependent history data to the cumulative damage progress of rubble-mound breakwaters. The parameters involved in the lifetime distribution can be easily estimated by using the upper and lower limits of lifetime and their likelihood that made a judgement by several experts taking account of the initial design lifetime, the past sequences of loads, and others. The simplified model presented in this paper has been applied to the rubble-mound breakwater with TTP armor layer. Wiener Process (WP)-based stochastic model also has been applied together with Monte-Carlo Simulation (MCS) technique to the breakwater of the same condition having time-dependent cumulative damage to TTP armor layer. From the comparison of lifetime distribution obtained from each models including Mean Time To Failure (MTTF), it has found that the lifetime distributions of rubble-mound breakwater can be very satisfactorily fitted by log-normal distribution for all types of cumulative damage progresses, such as exponential, linear, and logarithmic deterioration which are feasible in the real situations. Finally, the MRL of rubble-mound breakwaters estimated by the simplified model presented in this paper have been compared with those by WP stochastic process. It can be shown that results of the presented simplified model have been identical with those of WP stochastic process until any ages in the range of MTT F regardless of the deterioration types. However, a little of differences have been seen at the ages in the neighborhood of MTTF, specially, for the linear and logarithmic deterioration of cumulative damages. For the accurate estimation of MRL of harbor structures, it may be desirable that the stochastic processes should be used to consider properly time-dependent uncertainties of damage deterioration. Nevertheless, the simplified model presented in this paper can be useful in the building of the MRL-based preventive maintenance planning for several kinds of harbor structures, because of which is not needed time-dependent history data about the damage deterioration of structures as mentioned above.