Abstract A large portion of natural gas is transferred through transmission pipelines. For these facilities, in the United States, external corrosion has led to more than 1700 failures in the past decades, causing a property damage of approximately $189 M. Such numbers highlight the importance of maintaining such facilities in safe conditions to postpone corrosion failure. Given such criticality, addressing pipeline availability is of high importance from economic consequences perspective for a national economy. However, most of the developed methods merely rely on considering costs, reliability or condition levels as maintenance decision criteria and ignore the importance of continuity of operation and pipeline availability. In this research, a maintenance planning framework is proposed for external corrosion of gas transmission pipelines through an availability-centered reliability-based maintenance planning procedure. This framework is based on the pipeline reliability profile obtained from a Monte Carlo simulation. This simulation is carried on a previously developed failure prediction model for gas transmission pipelines buried in the Great Plains region of the U.S. and considers failure uncertainties. In addition, a discrete event simulation (DES) approach is proposed to assess an availability-cost indicator of different maintenance scheduling alternatives for the case study of a 24-inch gas pipeline. This research reveals that a combination of wrap and replacement maintenance actions at the service life of 30.1 and 40.5 years respectively, is the most effective maintenance alternative in terms of improvement of availability per unit cost for the presented case study. This framework can help pipeline professionals in maintaining such facilities by considering their criticality using an availability-based maintenance scheduling approach. Such method can complement the conventional cost-based industry practices.

中文翻译：

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基于可用性的以可靠性为中心的输气管道维护规划

摘要 天然气的很大一部分是通过管道输送的。对于这些设施，在美国，在过去的几十年中，外部腐蚀导致了 1700 多次故障，造成了大约 1.89 亿美元的财产损失。这些数字凸显了将这些设施保持在安全条件下以推迟腐蚀故障的重要性。鉴于这种重要性，从国民经济的经济后果角度来看，解决管道可用性问题非常重要。然而，大多数开发的方法仅仅依赖于将成本、可靠性或条件水平作为维护决策标准，而忽略了操作连续性和管道可用性的重要性。在这项研究中，通过以可用性为中心、基于可靠性的维护计划程序，提出了一个维护计划框架，用于天然气输送管道的外部腐蚀。该框架基于从蒙特卡罗模拟获得的管道可靠性概况。该模拟基于先前开发的埋在美国大平原地区的输气管道的故障预测模型，并考虑了故障的不确定性。此外，针对 24 英寸天然气管道的案例研究，提出了一种离散事件模拟 (DES) 方法来评估不同维护计划备选方案的可用性成本指标。该研究表明，在使用寿命分别为 30.1 年和 40.5 年的情况下，结合包装和更换维护操作，对于所呈现的案例研究，就提高每单位成本的可用性而言，是最有效的维护替代方案。该框架可以使用基于可用性的维护计划方法来考虑这些设施的重要性，从而帮助管道专业人员维护这些设施。这种方法可以补充传统的基于成本的行业实践。