In-Service Inspection of Offshore Concrete Structures: Application of an Expert System

In-service inspection plays a significant role in maintaining the structural integrity of offshore structures. The in-service inspection covers in-situ inspections, evaluation of inspection results, condition assessment of the structure and planning for future inspections. The planning of in-service inspection is a complex process due to the presence of uncertainties; in particular the uncertainties present in the inspection results. In addition, the vagueness and the importance of expert knowledge necessitate having a methodology to integrate in a coherent manner. This manuscript suggests a fuzzy expert system to address the aforementioned. This enables optimizing the number of inspection points to be focused on, whilst identifying the potential risk areas needing priority in future inspections with minimal effort and higher efficiency. This manuscript also discusses the use of available inspection methods of offshore concrete structures subject to deterioration and the use of inspection evaluation results to develop an expert system for future inspections.