Steel bridges that are under severe chloride exposure due to deicing salts or marine environmental effects require frequent maintenance and repair activities to extend their service life and maintain an adequate performance level. In addition to the direct maintenance cost, these maintenance actions may lead to indirect costs associated with traffic delays and environmental effects that can sig...

For firms remanufacturing their products, the total life-cycle costs and revenues from new and remanufactured products determine their profitability. In many firms, manufacturing/sales and remanufacturing/remarketing operations are carried out in different divisions. Each division is responsible for only part of the product’s life cycle. Practices regarding transfer pricing across divisions var...

Environmental regulations are gradually striving to decarbonize short-sea navigation fostering the replacement of conventional power systems with alternative ones. The electrification ships has been proposed in literature as a pathway zero-emission shipping. Among various alternatives, batteries could ensure full conformity tightening emission restrictions. However, appropriate for need be inve...

This paper presents a new graduate level cost analysis course that has been taught in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland. The objective of this course is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the process of predicting the cost of systems. Elements of traditional engineering economics are melded with manufacturing process modeling, life cycle cost...

One of the goals infrastructure asset management research is to find appropriate repair policies for systems. The annual cost system may vary when a policy meant only minimize life cycle applied each facility in system. Such variance leads difficulty securing budget managers; thus, desirable, practicable should reduce not but also dispersion cost. In this study, we first formulate network-level...

The present paper investigates the effect of limit state selection ~strength versus serviceability! on bridge deck life-cycle costs and thus on optimal repair strategies. Such a comparison may then help determine whether safety or functionality ~or both! are important criteria when optimizing bridge life-cycle performance and costs. The structural element under consideration is a reinforced con...

It is well known that the costs to fix errors increase as the project matures, but how fast do those costs build? A study was performed to determine the relative cost of fixing errors discovered during various phases of a project life cycle. This study used three approaches to determine the relative costs: the bottom-up cost method, the total cost breakdown method, and the top-down hypothetical...

It is well known that the costs to fix errors increase as the project matures, but how fast do those costs build? A study was performed to determine the relative cost of fixing errors discovered during various phases of a project life cycle. This study used three approaches to determine the relative costs: the bottom-up cost method, the total cost breakdown method, and the top-down hypothetical...