Deterioration modeling and maintenance assessment using physics-informed stochastic Petri nets: Application to torrent protection structures

Abstract

Mountain territories are remarkably exposed to natural phenomena such as torrential floods, arising due to climate and geophysical environmental changes. Protection structures deteriorate with time due to the harsh phenomena they are subjected to since their construction. If not regularly maintained, the level of protection offered by these structures will be reduced. The methodology presented in this paper integrates physics-based and dependability models for monitoring the state evolution of protection structures and improving maintenance decision-making processes. The modeling approach proposed is based on 1) physics-based modeling for identifying the probabilistic laws of the transition times between the defined states of the structure depending on its behavior over time and 2) a decision aiding method based on Petri nets, which helps in choosing the best maintenance strategy while considering budgetary constraints. This approach is applied on a check dam located within a series of check dams in the Manival torrent in Saint-Ismier, France.

Cascade Effect Analysis in Torrential Context for Prioritizing Check Dams Maintenance Strategies

“…n different flood series) using the physical model. The n flood series can be generated by choosing the average peak discharge and event's dates as random variables following a specific probability law [2]. The n resulted estimations of the times spent in each state allow fitting a probability distribution for these stochastic transitions.…”

“…In recent studies [2], hydraulics and stability calculations were performed in order to assess the functional and structural efficacy of check dams when subjected to a series of flood events over a specified period of time. Then stochastic Petri nets (SPN) were used for supporting check dams' maintenance decision-making based on a condition-based maintenance policy.…”

Integrating Imperfect Information in the Deterioration Modeling of Torrent Protection Measures for Maintenance and Reliability Assessment

“…Indeed, recent approaches differentiate between aleatory and epistemic uncertainty and model them by means of different theories but still within an integrated framework (Helton and Oberkampf, 2004). For example, in risk context, aleatory uncertainty is usually modeled by conventional probability distributions and epistemic uncertainty by possibility distributions or fuzzy calculus (Chojnacki et al, 2010).…”

“…In a recent research work, a multi-disciplinary approach is developed in order to support maintenance decision-making of a check dam subjected to torrential floods (Chahrour et al, 2021). It starts by a physics-based model that permits modeling the dynamic deterioration of the dam taking into account interactions between structural (external stability) and functional (scouring) failure modes.…”

“…The next section, describes the origin and the nature of information imperfection and briefly reviews some of the methods used for its propagation. Section 3 summarizes the check dam's deterioration and maintenance model developed by (Chahrour et al, 2021) and describes the hybrid approach used for assessing different forms of information imperfection involved within the model. In Section 4, HYRISK analysis is applied to the check dam's model in order to reveal some of the expected results.…”