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Economic and market conditions have resulted in the use of commercial jet transport airplanes well beyond their design service objective (DSO). Air transport industry consensus is that older jet transport airplanes will continue to be in service despite an anticipated substantial increase in the required maintenance. Based on economical considerations, established operators may replace their airplanes beyond DSO with new ones. At the same time these older airplanes are sold to operators with little or no knowledge and experience of the aging airplane maintenance programs. Discusses the damage tolerance concept, its relation to airplane age and its evolution that is fail‐safe to damage tolerance based maintenance certification for jet transport airplanes. Also, this paper will discuss a process for upgrading structural inspection programs for older airplanes to damage tolerance standard per MSG‐3 Rev. 2 analysis. Finally, sub‐surface corrosion on principal airplane structures and its effect on airplane safety will be discussed.

An examination of the advantages of fail safe design and present non‐destructive testing techniques, and the importance of facilitating inspection at the design stage. THE introduction to this paper justifies in depth the case for fail safe philosophies in aircraft structural design. The advantages include improved safety, weight savings, the full availability of the potential fatigue life of each individual aircraft in the fleet, protection against accidental damage in service and manufacturing errors, together with a good resale value.

The purpose of this study is to develop a building information modelling (BIM)-based mixed reality (MR) application to enhance and facilitate the process of managing bridge inspection and maintenance works remotely from office. It aims to address the ineffective decision-making process on maintenance tasks from the conventional method which relies on documents and 2D drawings on visual inspection. This study targets two key issues: creating a BIM-based model for bridge inspection and maintenance; and developing this model in a MR platform based on Microsoft Hololens.

Literature review is conducted to determine the limitation of MR technology in the construction industry and identify the gaps of integration of BIM and MR for bridge inspection works. A new framework for a greater adoption of integrated BIM and Hololens is proposed. It consists of a bridge information model for inspection and a newly-developed Hololens application named “HoloBridge”. This application contains the functional modules that allow users to check and update the progress of inspection and maintenance. The application has been implemented for an existing bridge in South Korea as the case study.

The results from pilot implementation show that the inspection information management can be enhanced because the inspection database can be systematically captured, stored and managed through BIM-based models. The inspection information in MR environment has been improved in interpretation, visualization and visual interpretation of 3D models because of intuitively interactive in real-time simulation.

The proposed framework through “HoloBridge” application explores the potential of integrating BIM and MR technology by using Hololens. It provides new possibilities for remote inspection of bridge conditions.

The utilisation of emerging technologies for the inspection of bridges has remarkably increased. In particular, non-destructive testing (NDT) technologies are deemed a potential alternative for costly, labour-intensive, subjective and unsafe conventional bridge inspection regimes. This paper aims to develop a framework to overcome conventional inspection regimes' limitations by deploying multiple NDT technologies to carry out digital visual inspections of masonry railway bridges.

This research adopts an exploratory case study approach, and the empirical data is collected through exploratory workshops, interviews and document reviews. The framework is implemented and refined in five masonry bridges as part of the UK railway infrastructure. Four NDT technologies, namely, terrestrial laser scanner, infrared thermography, 360-degree imaging and unmanned aerial vehicles, are used in this study.

A digitally enhanced visual inspection framework is developed by using complementary optical methods. Compared to the conventional inspection regimes, the new approach requires fewer subjective interpretations due to the additional qualitative and quantitative analysis. Also, it is safer and needs fewer operators on site, as the actual inspection can be carried out remotely.

This research is a step towards digitalising the inspection of bridges, and it is of particular interest to transport agencies and bridge inspectors and can potentially result in revolutionising the bridge inspection regimes and guidelines.

Structural integrity inspection of offshore wind turbine blades poses problems of gaining access to the blades, danger to human operatives and large costs of removing a blade and transporting it off‐shore for inspection. The purpose of this paper is to show that a climbing robot that can perform in situ blade inspection with micro/nano focus computed axial X‐ray tomography is a solution to find defects in the thickest blade sections and reduce the cost of inspection.

The weight of such an inspection system will be high, typically 200 kg and cross sectional scanner dimensions of 1 × 2 m to envelope a blade. The design of a climbing ring robot that completely encircles a turbine tower, typically 3 m in diameter, will provide the best means of climbing with this payload. Because of the development costs of such a huge robot, the optimal design path is to first prototype a small scale model.

First results on such a model are described and from its performance the load carrying capabilities of a full scale version computed. The robot is able to climb either straight up or down, or with a spiralling motion, or rotate around the circumference at the same height. Furthermore, the design is entirely modular thus enabling easy on‐site assembly of the robot.

A climbing robot with high payload and versatile motion capability, with adhesive forces between the robot and climbing surface provided entirely by mechanical means rather than by vacuum suction or magnetic force, making the system much safer and easier to manipulate.

The current methods for inspecting tall or deep structures such as towers, chimneys, silos, and wells suffer from certain constraints. Manual and assisted inspection methods including humans, drones, wall climbing robots, and others are either costly, have a limited operation time, or affected by field conditions, such as temperature and radiation. This study aims to overcome the presented challenges through a teleoperated soft continuum manipulator capable of inspecting tall or deep structures with high resolution, an unlimited operation time and the ability to use different arms of the manipulator for different environments and structure sizes.

The teleoperated manipulator uses one rotary and two tendon actuators to reach and inspect the interior of a tall (or deep) structure. A sliding part along the manipulator’s body (arm constrainer and tendon router) induces a variable-length bending segment, allowing an inspection camera to be placed at different distances from the desired location.

The experiments confirmed the manipulator’s ability to inspect different locations in the structure’s interior. The manipulator also demonstrated a submillimeter motion resolution vertically and a 2.5 mm per step horizontally. The inspection time of the full structure was 48.53 min in the step-by-step mode and was calculated to be 4.23 min in the continuous mode.

The presented manipulator offers several design novelties: the arm’s thin-wide cross-section, the variable-length bending segment in a fixed-length body, the external rolling tendon routing and the ability to easily replace the arm with another of different material or dimensions to suite different structures and environments.

The purpose of this paper is to assess nursing staff perceptions regarding the clinical audit tool used for relicensing inspections within private hospitals in eThekwini district.

An exploratory sequential mixed method research design was used with a qualitative first phase involving a total population of 40 nurse managers through purposive sampling. Nurse managers (n=24) were interviewed. This was followed by a quantitative phase in which a structured questionnaire was administered to nurses (n=270) who were randomly sampled for the study from (n=4) hospitals. Documentation review, a third phase was used to corroborate the findings of the first two phases of the study.

The results of the study showed that the participants perceptions of the selected private hospitals in eThekwini district is that they have not fully implemented the approach to practice standards and healthcare audits in relation to three clinical domains of the National Core Standards and the Batho Pele principles. These findings were significant and denoted the need for a standardised clinical audit tool for private hospitals in eThekwini district.

This study was confined to an independent group of hospitals and the findings may not be suitable for generalising across all private hospitals in eThekwini district.

These findings led to the development of a clinical audit tool with measurements representing elements of care that are critical to the provision of safe, quality health care services.

In the present-day context of a sharp decrease in economic and ecological resources, planned conservation and community empowerment are key strategies for sustainable heritage management, because of their cost effectiveness, increased preservation of authenticity and socially development. However, there are still very few practical implementations, so the purpose of this paper is to present applied research to real case studies, as well as to demonstrate that preventive-planned conservation is increasingly successful when linked with the empowerment of local communities and users.

This paper proposes a methodology that focuses on two complementary aspects: planned conservation (material component) – undertaken directly on buildings, through inspection, monitoring, maintenance and repair activities; community empowerment (intangible component) – afforded indirectly to users, through participatory strategies and training in prevention, maintenance and use.

Based on an estimation of costs, this paper suggests that preventive-planned conservation strategies (pre-damage) can be one-third cheaper than the reactive and interventionist approach (post-damage). Moreover, this study also develops innovative ICT tools for the planned conservation of the built heritage, namely a specifically designed computer software/App (“MPlan”) that can be used to compile maintenance plans.

The case studies are among the first applications of preventive-planned conservation strategies to the built heritage in Portugal. Different types of case studies are provided to better illustrate the methodological approach adopted and the results obtained. Special attention is given to the Romanesque Route, a cultural itinerary with 58 monuments (monasteries, churches, bridges, towers and a castle). illustrated manuals contribute to the empowerment of local communities and users.

BOAC has taken delivery of 12 747 100 series aircraft to date. The first seven were fitted with JT9D‐3A engines, the last five with JT9D‐7s.

Describes the 1989 Building Control Act in Singapore, which requires most building owners to commission periodic structural inspections, offering opportunities for establishing a sound basis for national corporate whole‐life property asset management. Outlines the background to this legislation and its main provisions, and suggests how the survey process and data which will be available could benefit the government policy‐makers and individual owners in formulating and implementing planned maintenance strategies for Singapore′s largely new‐built stock.