Computer Program for Approximating System Reliability - Part II

Batts, James R.

doi:10.1109/tr.1971.5216093

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It compares favorably with other methods that have been developed. A computer program developed by Batts (1971), and Nelson et al (1970), cannot handle systems containing loops and has been structured so as to limit its application to small systems. The user needs to supply a list of predecessors for each element in the diagram (in other words, the class sets must be provided).…”

Section: Characterization Of Block Diagramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process Failure Analysis by Block Diagrams and Fault Trees

Caceres¹,

Henley²

1976

Ind. Eng. Chem. Fund.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A reliability or hazards analysis can be developed from either a block diagram or fault tree representation of the process. This paper emphasizes the equivalence of these two representations and develops a procedure for automatically transforming a block diagram into a fault tree. The technique is based on a computer-oriented algorithm developed to detect all the minimal paths leading to the success of a system represented by a block diagram. The fault tree thus developed is a true, sequential representation of possible modes of process failure.

show abstract

Section: Characterization Of Block Diagramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process Failure Analysis by Block Diagrams and Fault Trees

Caceres¹,

Henley²

1976

Ind. Eng. Chem. Fund.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The same is true for reliability calculation based on cut enumeration. To avoid this difficulty, some lower and upper bounds approximations to system reliability are presented (Messinger and Shooman, 1967;Jensen and Bellmore, 1969;Nelson et al, 1970;Batts, 1971;Locks;.…”

Section: Approximations To System Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Process reliability analysis

Henley

Gandhi

1975

AIChE Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a unified approach for obtaining system reliability and availability parameters from block diagram representations of process systems. It starts with computer algorithms for obtaining the minimal paths in a system, then shows how this information can be combined with unit reliability data to obtain the overall system reliability, and the response of system reliability to changes in unit reliability (sensitivities). It then demonstrates how these sensitivities can be used to optimize the system reliability and availability by equipment redundancy. Extension of the methodology to the automated production of system fault trees as well as the mathematical relationship between fault trees and block diagrams are noted. ERNEST SCOPEThe trend to larger, more complex, and highly interdependent process systems has been in evidence for some time. With increasing scale, repair becomes more costly in both time and money, startup and shutdown losses increase, and the vulnerability of the plant becomes a matter of grave concern. Further factors spurring the process industries' interest in reliability analysis are the high cost of maintenance, which now is as much as 10% of plant cost/annum, and the problems associated with insurance, siting, environmental degradation due to failures, and the establishment of a good public image.In this paper we focus attention on analytical methods whereby system reliability parameters can be obtained from block-diagrammatic representation of process flow sheets. Although other techniques, such as state enumeration methods are treated, primary emphasis is on the development of path enumeration methods by which the reliability parameters of complex (nonseries-parallel) systems can be computed. As demonstrated in the paper, this approach is particularly powerful because it also permits calculation of the sensitivity of the overall system reliability to changes in configuration and unit reliability. These sensitivities, being gradients, are then used in conjunction with integer, gradient-based, optimization algorithms to solve problems involving allocation of equipment and maintenance intervals.Also discussed are the construction of fault trees and some potentially useful algorithms for their automated construction from block diagrams. CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCEThe increasing interest of the chemical industry in reliability analysis is clearly demonstrated by the fact that only three articles on this subject appeared in the chemical engineering literature prior to 1971, and more than 16 have been published since. To date, the process industry has depended almost completely on computational methods developed by the military, electronic, aerospace, and nuclear industries where primary concern is catastrophic failure of essentially nonrepairable systems.In attempting to apply previously developed methods to process systems, one finds that they do not readily lend themselves to many of the problems of interest to chemical engineers who generally must deal with multicomponent stre...

show abstract

Exact calculation of computer network reliability

1974

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In designing a distributed computer network, the reliability and availability of the communication paths between all pairs of centers is a primary consideration. Many different approaches have been taken to calculate exactly the probability of successful communication between any specified pair of centers, for a given failure probability of the individual computer systems and communication facilities. However, almost all of these methods are not computationally feasible for large networks. Consequently, approximate calculations of network reliability have been suggested. In this paper a procedure is given for the exact calculation of the probability that all paths between a pair of nodes in a given network are interrupted. The procedure generates mutually exclusive sets of cutting states and calculates the probability of the related events. Summing these values one obtains the probability of service interruption between the specified pair of nodes. If all links fail with equal probability p, the coefficients of a polynomial can be calculated, describing the service disruption probability as a function of p.

show abstract

Computer Program for Approximating System Reliability - Part II

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Process Failure Analysis by Block Diagrams and Fault Trees

Process Failure Analysis by Block Diagrams and Fault Trees

Process reliability analysis

Exact calculation of computer network reliability

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About