A Framework for estimating piping reliability subject to corrosion under insulation

Corrosion under insulation (CUI) is one of the serious damage mechanisms experienced by insulated piping systems. Optimizing the inspection schedule for insulated piping systems is a major challenge faced by inspection and corrosion engineers since CUI takes place beneath the insulation which makes the detection and prediction of the damage mechanism harder. In recent years, risk-based inspection (RBI) approach has been adopted to optimize CUI inspection plan. RBI approach is based on risk, a product of the likelihood of a failure and the consequence of such failure. The likelihood analysis usually follows either the qualitative or the semi-qualitative methods, thus precluding it to be used for quantitative risk assessment. This paper presents a framework for estimating quantitatively the likelihood of failure due to CUI based on the type of data available. © 2014 Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences.