Understanding barriers towards the commercialization of nuclear fusion energy

The urgency for decarbonization of the energy grid is ever increasing and fossil energy sources must be replaced by sustainable sources of energy to prevent detrimental levels of global warming. Renewable energy sources wind and solar show potential and contribute to decarbonization but are intermitted and require storage solutions that are...

Measures for structural safety - Modelling the human error influence on temporary falsework during the design and construction

Within the Netherlands, the building industry is startled every couple of years by an impactful structure collapse. Even though over the years, a large amount of structural failure investigation reports and studies have provided abundant lessons, regulations, and good practices, structural failures still occur occasionally. The question arises...

Estimating the (remaining) service life of timber bridges with the use of factor methods: And incorporating these methods in the calculation of the total costs of ownership

Timber bridges are much applied structures in the Dutch landscape. In contrast to the other two most common building materials, concrete and steel, the use of timber is however almost exclusively limited to bridges for lighter traffic, e.g. pedestrians and bicycles. Examples of timber traffic bridges in Germany, Scandinavia and even in the...

A decision making framework to achieve prescriptive maintenance in the FMCG production industry

In recent years, technologies such as artificial intelligence have enabled computer systems to provide decision support for maintenance planning. Using advanced analytics to determine optimal maintenance actions and moments is called prescriptive maintenance. Multiple prescriptive maintenance models have been proposed for different industries....

Long-term Availability Analysis of Water Treatment Plants: Complex Repairable Systems with Deteriorating Characteristics

Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) play a key role in assuring water availability to citizens and businesses. Long term availability of these plants is the interest of the asset manager of a WTP and can be influenced by maintenance strategies and modifications of the system. A WTP is characterized by a complex configuration and repairable,...