Development of Stand-Alone Risk Assessment Software for Optimized Maintenance Planning of Power Plant Facilities

Risk-Risk-based inspection (RBI) has been developed in order to identify risky equipments that can cause major accidents or damages in large-scale plants. This assessment evaluates the equipment's risk, categorizes their priorities based on risk level, and then determines the urgency of their maintenance or allocates maintenance resources. An earlier version of the risk-based assessment software is already installed within the equipment management system; however, the assessment is based on examination by an inspector, and the results can be influenced by his subjective judgment, rather than assessment being based on failure probability. Moreover, the system is housed within a server, which limits the inspector's work space and time, and such a system can be used only on site. In this paper, the development of independent risk-based assessment software is introduced; this software calculates the failure probability by an analytical method, and analyzes the field inspection results, as well as inspection effectiveness. It can also operate on site, since it can be installed on an independent platform, and has the ability to generate an I/O function for the field inspection results regarding the period for an optimum maintenance cycle. This program will provide useful information not only to the field users who are participating in maintenance, but also to the engineers who need to decide whether to extend the lifecycle of the power machinery or replace only specific components.