Defining a system.

Viewing a system as a collection of components and/or component failure modes.

Overview of Fault Tree (FT) analysis.

Origins and benefits of FT Analysis.

Building blocks of FT.

Steps to constructing a FT.

Some rules and conventions

Types of events (basic, house, undeveloped, conditional).

OR gate.

AND gate.

Inhibit gate.

Voting gate.

Traditional vs. BlockSim Fault Tree events.

Using distributions in addition to fixed probabilities.

Inclusion of "used" components in modeling.

System reliability metrics:

• Obtaining a system pdf.

• Derivation of functions of interest: system failure rate function, system MTTF, etc.

Expanding the classical voting OR gate.
 

Traditional vs. BlockSim Fault Tree gates.

Load sharing gate:

• Combining life distributions with life-stress (load) relationships to describe dependency effects.

• Basic load sharing gate.

• K-out-of-n load sharing gate.

Standby gate:

• Energized and quiescent failure distributions.

• "Hot," "Warm" and "Cold" standby definitions.

• Switching (perfect or imperfect switching, with delays, retries and switch quiescent failure probabilities).

• K-out-of-n-plus-M standby configurations.

Sequence enforcing gate

Priority AND gate

Encapsulation (subdiagram blocks).

Event Mirroring.

Definition of Minimal Cut Sets

Obtaining Minimal Cut Sets

Using minimal cut sets to model complex configurations

Definition of common cause failures

Treating common cause failures

Identifying importance of components, subsystems (and or modes) and their overall impact on system reliability.

Cost/Feasibility functions.

Determining component reliabilities to achieve system goal.

Specifying component reliabilities to achieve system goal.

Definitions

Comparing Fault Trees to RBDs

RBD equivalents to all types of Fault Tree gates

Advantages of RBDs over Fault Trees

Traditional vs. BlockSim Fault Tree gates.

Repair and downtime distributions and metrics.

Introduction to renewal theory.

Introduction to maintainability.

Imperfect repairs (restoration factors).

Availability definitions:

• Instantaneous (Point) Availability

• Mean Availability

• Steady State Availability

• Inherent Availability

• Achieved Availability

• Operational Availability

When does "Preventive Maintenance" make sense?

The fallacy of "Constant Failure Rate" and "Preventive Replacement."

Quantifying preventive vs. corrective replacement strategies.

Determining optimum PM intervals.

Modeling effects of PM actions.

Adding Crews to the analysis.

• Probabilistic elements.

• Crew costs.

• Crew utilization metrics and bottlenecks.

Adding Spare Part Pools (Depots) to the analysis.

• Probabilistic elements.

• Spare part inventory management, costs.

• Spare utilization metrics and bottlenecks.

• Standard, on-condition and upon emergency spare part provisioning with associated costs and probabilistic delays.

Utilizing "Corrective," "Preventive" and "Inspection" actions with associated policies.

• Corrective actions, "Immediate" or "Upon Inspection" (hidden/discovery).

• Inspections based on system time, component age and/or other system events (e.g. similar component failure elsewhere in the system).

• PM actions based on system time, component age and/or other system events (e.g. similar component failure elsewhere in the system).

Looking at common metrics (MTBF, MTBDE, MTBE, AX, etc.) and charts.

Additional (new) metrics for identifying opportunities in repairable systems:

RS-FCI (ReliaSoft's Failure Criticality Index).

RS-DECI (ReliaSoft's Downing Event Criticality Index).

FRED reports.

Determination of the probabilistic costs associated with system operation.

Sample financial analysis.

Throughput Analysis

Introduction to and familiarization with BlockSim BlockSim.

Creating models in BlockSim that apply all of the above principles

Individually work through detailed examples with step-by-step instructions to complete sample analyses.

Using realistic cases (described in an objective statement), determine how to set up and analyze each case in a team environment.