Civil Age-Related Failure Modes (Step 2)

Find below additional details for Step 2 of the Civil RBI Methodology.

When failure occurs shortly after the asset has been brought (back) in operation, it is called an “infant mortality”. When this happens, it is sometimes said that the equipment suffers from “teething problems”. Potential causes are for instance poor design, bad workmanship, and incorrect operation. Since these types of failures occur either instantly or after a relatively brief degradation process, as compared to a failure with an age-related root cause, they are regarded as non-age-related failures.

Figure 65 indicates six typical failure patterns with on the vertical axis the failure probability and on the horizontal axis time. Pattern 1 is the well-known “bathtub curve” that starts with infant mortality problems, followed by a constant or slowly increasing failure probability and finished by a wear-out period. A galvanized steel asset or concrete asset will most likely have failure pattern 1.

Typical failure patterns: