Kostensenkung bei wiederkehrenden Prüfungen im Einklang mit der Betriebs-Sicherheits-Verordnung

The new ordinance regarding operating safety (BetrSichV) mandates that owner/operators of manufacturing facilities with pressurized equipment e.g. steam boiler, to determine the regularity of repeated surveillance inspections. This requirement applies to the entire manufacturing facility as well as to pressure equipment individually. The determination shall be done on the basis of the current technical condition of the entire facility and its operating modules. In particular, the following shall be considered: - condition of the operating ability of safety-relevant devices, including controlled safety pressure relief systems and safety measurement control and regulation devices, - condition of all pressurised equipment, regarding safety related to its actual wall-thickness, etc. Because of the growing competition within industries and the desired reliability of a manufacturing facility, it is unavoidable permanently re-evaluate the scope of plant/facility inspections (maintenance, shutdown) regarding inspection and testing scope and duration. Amongst others, factors like time, inspection priorities, or repair tasks are more and more to be held flexible and at the same time cost-effective. However, even under consideration of all aspects of cost effectiveness, all applicable laws, codes and regulations must be adhered to. Because of the fact that inspection and testing tasks can only be performed on a random basis, it is essential to implement a range of technical as well as documentary support tools, with which inspection and testing tasks can be classified on a time- and area-relevant basis. Such support tools must correspond to the state of the art, and they must be legally sound. Furthermore, it is important that such tools are detectable and traceable by the local authorities and relevant government offices. In order to be able to determine the sequence and priority of inspection tasks and activities, a quantifiable statistical evaluation of failure mode developments could be calculated with the aid of mathematical programs. One possible method for an evaluation is the fatigue determination based on TRD 508, VGB-R 509 L or EN 12952-4. In particular, this method applies to equipment that operates under lifetime expectancy conditions or cyclic loads (alternating stress). Based on a number of real-life examples, we will demonstrate this method. An off-line surveillance-method for new and old facilities is explaine in particular.