Proactive health monitoring in performance updating of deteriorating systems

Predicting the future condition and safety of deteriorating systems for a foreseeable part of the remaining service life is vital for their effective management. The qualitative information provided by visual inspections is not sufficient for this purpose. The data provided by NDE is quantitative but is intermittent in the time and space. Health monitoring systems using state-of-art instruments have the ability to provide information on the systems behaviour in a continuous, or almost continuous, time scale but can provide information at a few specified locations. All these methods cannot be used explicitly for the prediction of future performance of the systems. On the other hand, research on different materials in the area of performance prediction has led to the development of a range of predictive models for different conditions. The applications of these models are limited due to high level of uncertainties associated with them. The confidence in the predicted performance can be increased by the effective use of information (both qualitative and quantitative) obtained via a range of inspections, testing and monitoring carried out at various stages in the service life of systems. This would enable a more reliable prediction of the condition and safety of the systems; hence provide a tool for their effective management and optimum use of resources.