An ontology for the management of equipment ageing

Industrial equipment, containing or converting hazardous substances, is subject to ageing phenomena, which can affect the safety levels of the entire establishment as they increase the risk of loss of containment. Ageing is as a general form of deterioration, which is associated with the in-service time, as well as with the change of the equipment during its operating. Deterioration mechanisms are the cause of a significant percentage of failures and accidents, nevertheless they are also related to many other factors associated with design, management and operation. The knowledge of deterioration mechanisms includes the understanding of the three fundamental relationships “cause-effect”, “boundary conditions-propagation rate” and “measurement-identification”; in addition, to implement a safe management of the phenomenon, it is essential to monitor equipment deterioration. In this paper, an approach exploring such relationships is proposed, which is based on an ontological interpretation of mechanisms. To have a complete representation of the knowledge domain, the ontology integrates the concepts and relationships, already defined in the literature, with the information about current emerging monitoring techniques, as well as that about the management system. The proposed approach has several applications, including the design and data management of an ageing monitoring system for industrial equipment. A use-case is described in the paper, which refers to a liquid fuel tank farm.