Abstract:

There is a growing trend in applying aprognostics and health management approach to engineering systems in general and space and aviation systems in particular. This paper reviews the role of prognosticsand health management approach in support of integrated risk-based applications to nuclear power plants,like risk-based in-service inspection, technical specification optimization, maintenance optimization, etc.The review involves a survey of the state-of-art technologies in prognosticsand health managementandan exploration ofits role in support of integrated risk-based engineering and how the technology can be adopted to realize enhanced safety and operational performance. An integrated risk-based engineering frameworkfor nuclear power plantshas been proposed,where probabilistic risk assessment plays the role of identification, prioritization and optimization of systems, structures,and components,while deterministic assessment is performed using a prognostics andhealth management approach. Keeping in view the requirements of structural reliabilityassessment, the paper also proposes essential features ofa‘Mechanics-of-Failure’approachin support of integrated risk-based engineering. The performance criteria used in prognostics and health management has been adopted to meet requirements of risk-based applications.