Prognosis of wear-out effect on of safety equipment reliability for nuclear power plants long-term safe operation

To reach a Net Zero Emission scenario, on 1st January 2022 the European Union (EU) declared nuclear and gas as transitional activities under strict safety conditions. A central challenge is that many nuclear reactors in operation are close to or have reached their design life, so that, it is required to demonstrate the influence of equipment ageing on plant reliability will be kept under control in the plan extended lifetime. In this work a three-step methodology is proposed to obtain the time instants at which the failure rate behaviour changes (break points) and the most appropriate age-dependant reliability model to explicitly include the effects of ageing and maintenance. The methodology requires the reliability parameters estimation at each phase of the plant equipment lifetime, what is carried out by using the available Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) historical data, which is quite scarce. The methodology is applied to a motor operated valve of a NPP safety system. The results demonstrate the capability of the approach proposed to estimate and predict the component reliability in the plant extended lifetime depending on the maintenance policy implemented, being necessary to estimate an accurate age-dependant reliability model to support the decision-making process on equipment ageing management.Grant PID2019-110590RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 “ERDF A way of making Europe”

A modelling approach to optimal imperfect maintenance of repairable equipment with multiple failure modes

Most of the existing works on optimal imperfect maintenance activities of a repairable equipment with independent components consider a single model for equipment behaviour. In addition, it is assumed that all the components of the equipment share the same model and the same maintenance intervals and that effectiveness of maintenance is known. In this paper we take a different approach. In order to formalize the uncertainty on the occurrence of failures and on the effect of maintenance activities, we consider, for each component, a class of candidate models. These models are obtained by combining failure rate models with imperfect maintenance models. The best model, that might be different for the different components, is then selected. All the parameters are assumed to be unknown and are jointly estimated via maximum likelihood. Model selection is performed, separately for each component, using standard selection criteria that take the problem of over-parametrization into account. The selected models are used to derive the cost per time unit and the average reliability of the equipment, the objective functions of a Multi-Objective Optimization Problem with maintenance intervals of each single component as decision variables. The proposed procedure is illustrated using a real data example.This work was a collaborative effort and was partly supported by the Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Sport (Generalitat de la Comunitat Valenciana, Spain) under grant GV/2017/015

Adaptation and Validation the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS) to Physical Education in a Spanish Context

The aim of this study is to validate and adapt to the Spanish context of Physical Education (PE) the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS). The study included 1428 students aged 13–19. In order to analyse the psychometric properties of the SMS, an exploratory factorial analysis was carried out to confirm the presence of two factors, a confirmatory factorial analysis that has offered support for both the structure of two factors. We also included an analysis of temporal stability, an analysis of invariance across gender, an analysis of internal consistency and an analysis of predictive validity through a t-test in which mental health (β = −0.28, p < 0.001) and physical or bodily experience (β = −0.16, p < 0.001) negatively predicted anxiety, respectively. The structure of the questionnaire was valid and reliable, gender-neutral and with adequate levels of temporal stability

Optimization of test and maintenance of ageing components consisting of multiple items and addressing effectiveness

[EN] There are many models in the literature that have been proposed in the last decades aimed at assessing the reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) of safety equipment, many of them with a focus on their use to assess the risk level of a technological system or to search for appropriate design and/or surveillance and maintenance policies in order to assure that an optimum level of RAM of safety systems is kept during all the plant operational life. This paper proposes a new approach for RAM modelling that accounts for equipment ageing and maintenance and testing effectiveness of equipment consisting of multiple items in an integrated manner. This model is then used to perform the simultaneous optimization of testing and maintenance for ageing equipment consisting of multiple items. An example of application is provided, which considers a simplified High Pressure Injection System (HPIS) of a typical Power Water Reactor (PWR). Basically, this system consists of motor driven pumps (MDP) and motor operated valves (MOV), where both types of components consists of two items each. These components present different failure and cause modes and behaviours, and they also undertake complex test and maintenance activities depending on the item involved. The results of the example of application demonstrate that the optimization algorithm provide the best solutions when the optimization problem is formulated and solved considering full flexibility in the implementation of testing and maintenance activities taking part of such an integrated RAM model.Authors are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the financial support of this work (research project ENE2013-45540-R) and the Doctoral fellow (BES-2011-043906 and BES-2014-067602).Martón Lluch, I.; Martorell Aigües, P.; Mullor, R.; Sánchez Galdón, AI.; Martorell Alsina, SS. (2016). Optimization of test and maintenance of ageing components consisting of multiple items and addressing effectiveness. Reliability Engineering and System Safety. 153:151-158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2016.04.015S15115815

Seguimiento del Grado en Matemáticas

Tal y como se ha desarrollado en años anteriores, el objetivo principal de esta red ha sido procurar la mejora en la coordinación y el seguimiento de los cursos correspondientes al Grado en Matemáticas de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de Alicante, que en el presente curso académico ha recibido la renovación de la acreditación y se engloba dentro del proceso general del seguimiento de todos los títulos de la Facultad de Ciencias. La red está coordinada por la coordinadora del Grado en Matemáticas y formada por los coordinadores de cada uno de los semestres. Se pretende evidenciar los progresos del título en el desarrollo del Sistema de Garantía Interno de Calidad (SGIC), con el fin de detectar las posibles deficiencias en el proceso de implantación del grado y contribuir a la propuesta de acciones para mejorar su diseño y desarrollo

Conceptualización y diseño de un sistema de retención infantil adoptado para el transporte escolar colectivo en carretera

El objetivo principal del Trabajo Fin de Grado es la conceptualización y diseño de un sistema de retención infantil articulado que permita el transporte de niños entre 3 y 7 años en vehículos de transporte colectivos como autobuses de uso en trayectos cortos. Objetivos secundarios: -Conocer la problemática en el uso de sistemas de sujeción en autobuses existentes actualmente en el mercado. -Desarrollar un nuevo producto que cumpla con los requisitos necesarios para su posterior fabricación. -Desarrollar un sistema mediante D.A.O. que permita obtener la planimetría del diseño final así como su preparación para cualquier estudio posterior que se lleve a cabo.Gandía Mullor, RJ. (2014). Conceptualización y diseño de un sistema de retención infantil adoptado para el transporte escolar colectivo en carretera. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/51851Archivo delegad

Adaptation and Validation the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS) to Physical Education in a Spanish Context

The aim of this study is to validate and adapt to the Spanish context of Physical Education (PE) the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS). The study included 1428 students aged 13&ndash;19. In order to analyse the psychometric properties of the SMS, an exploratory factorial analysis was carried out to confirm the presence of two factors, a confirmatory factorial analysis that has offered support for both the structure of two factors. We also included an analysis of temporal stability, an analysis of invariance across gender, an analysis of internal consistency and an analysis of predictive validity through a t-test in which mental health (&beta; = &minus;0.28, p &lt; 0.001) and physical or bodily experience (&beta; = &minus;0.16, p &lt; 0.001) negatively predicted anxiety, respectively. The structure of the questionnaire was valid and reliable, gender-neutral and with adequate levels of temporal stability

Seguimiento del Grado en Matemáticas: Curso 16-17

El objetivo principal de esta red es procurar la mejora en la coordinación y el seguimiento de los cursos correspondientes al Grado en Matemáticas de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de Alicante, que se engloba dentro del proceso general del seguimiento de todos los títulos de la Facultad de Ciencias. Para lograr este objetivo se han planteado varias tareas entre las que destacamos: el estudio de las recomendaciones recibidas en el informe final de reacreditación del título emitido por la AVAP (Agencia Valenciana de Evaluación y Prospectiva) tras la renovación de la acreditación del Grado durante el curso anterior con una valoración global FAVORABLE, estudio de la evolución de los resultados de las convocatorias ordinarias, encuestas a todos los alumnos sobre el funcionamiento de cada asignatura, encuesta a alumnos de 3º y 4º curso sobre Másters y, por último, estudio comparativo de tasas de abandono con los grados de matemáticas del resto de universidades españolas. La red está dirigida por la coordinadora del Grado en Matemáticas y formada por los coordinadores de cada uno de los semestres