Practical Power Plant Engineering

21Reliability Considerations and Calculations

CHAPTER MENU

• 21.1 Definitions
• 21.2 Basic Reliability Engineering Concepts
  • 21.2.1 Basic Mathematical Concepts in Reliability Engineering
  • 21.2.2 Failure Rate and Mean Time Between/to Failure (MTBF/MTTF)
• 21.3 Different Failure Rates vs. Time Scenarios
  • 21.3.1 The “Bathtub” Curve
  • 21.3.2 The Exponential Distribution
• 21.4 Estimating the System Reliability
  • 21.4.1 Series Systems
  • 21.4.2 Parallel Systems
  • 21.4.3 Parallel and Serial Elements
  • 21.4.4 Piper Alpha Rig Explosion
• 21.5 Common Mode Failure
  • 21.5.1 Space Shuttle Program
• 21.6 Availability
  • 21.6.1 Inherent Availability, A_i
  • 21.6.2 Operational Availability, A_o
  • 21.6.3 Availability Calculations
  • 21.6.4 Availability in Series
  • 21.6.5 Availability in Parallel
• References

21.1 Definitions

Reliability engineering deals with the longevity and dependability of parts, products, and systems. Reliability engineering incorporates a variety of analytical techniques designed to help engineers understand the failure modes and failure patterns of these parts, products, and systems. Every engineer and manager must learn the terminology and usefulness of the reliability principles [1,2] given below.

As a young engineer, I was lucky our company sent me on several seminars related to the reliability engineering. This was followed by me lecturing others.

This chapter refers for definitions, formulae, and some figures of the book Reliability Engineering Principles, best summarized and written by Drew Troyer, ...