Abstract |
Proper and timely maintenance of water pipes is inevitable to reduce leakage and breakage, to prevent water quality deterioration, to increase hydraulic capacity and so on. Rehabilitation of water pipes is applied to solve these problems and prolong the useful life since water pipes are most expensive part of a water supply system. Residual life of water pipes should be estimated by a current condition for the short and long-term rehabilitation planning. The remaining life of a water pipe buried underground is considerably affected from various factors such as environmental characteristics, pipe characteristics, operation and maintenance, etc. Therefore, it is difficult to determine their service life as uniformly the same value assigned by related laws and ordinances. As a result, the service life should be determined by the technical judgement based on the assessment for the condition of water pipes. In this study, the methodology is proposed to predict a residual life and plan short and long-term strategies for replacement/rehabilitation by introducing statistical life function through the current condition assessment. The methodology was applied for the verification and reliability to several sites selected in multi-regional transmission pipelines. The proposed method could helps to support reasonable and economical decision of rehabilitation/replacement in the present and future. To improve conventional assessment method of aged water pipes, affecting factors are simplified based on the statistical analysis results from the measured data in the field and the physical deterioration mechanism for better reliability. |
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Key Words |
Water pipes, Residual Life, Life curve, Deterioration, Rehabilitation |
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