Condition-Based Maintenance Models for Stone Claddings

Abstract

The awareness of the building managers and/or owners about the need to maintain their assets more efficiently has increased over the last years (Silva and de Brito, 2019). The maintenance of buildings’ envelope elements is not yet a first concern and is still reactive and sporadic based on subjective criteria (Forster and Kayan, 2009). Therefore, the development of more efficient methodologies for the implementation of strategic planning of maintenance actions is important (Aikivuori, 1999). The main purpose of this study is the development and implementation of a conditionbased maintenance model for Natural Stone Claddings (NSC). The proposed model is implemented using a stochastic Petri Nets (PN) framework. The case study selected is composed of 203 NSC, located in Portugal. The sample was established based on the diagnosis of the degradation condition of these claddings in-service performance, through in situ visual inspection. In the methodology proposed, three maintenance strategies are assessed: (i) major intervention only (MS1); (ii) combination of minor and major interventions (MS2); and (iii) combination of cleaning operations, minor and major interventions (MS3). The first one represents the most common solution adopted by buildings’ owners. The other two are analysed in order to evaluate the impact of the different alternatives in the claddings’ service life and in the whole-life maintenance costs, for the period under analysis.