Citation

de la Mare RF, Ball KJ. Reliab. Eng. 1981; 2(4): 289-302.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(81)90005-6

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Availability is increasingly being recognised as a factor having an important effect on the economics of process plant operation. However, previous analyses of the availability of process plant have generally included the assumption that failures and repairs of plant items follow an exponential distribution, largely due to the intractable nature of the analytical equations if the failure and repair rates are non-exponentially distributed. This paper outlines a model, and its subsequent solution by numerical methods, which enables the early life transient availability to be obtained for systems whose components exhibit non-exponential failure and repair behaviour. The situation most closely studied is where the failure rate is initially higher, due to such reasons as incorrect design or installation, or faulty components.

Poor initial availability and a significant delay in obtaining full production can seriously affect the economic returns gained from the high capital investment required in most process plant projects.