Systems Reliability Assessment : Proceedings of the Ispra Course Held at the Escuela Tecnica Superior De Ingenieros Navales, Madrid, Spain, September 19–23, 1988 in Collaboration with Universidad Politecnica De Madrid

This book presents models and methods for systems reliability assessment, human reliability analysis and uncertainty management. It includes fourteen contributions which are grouped into three sections. Section 1 deals with basic reliability methods and applications. The papers by Saiz de Bustamante and Perlado introduce the stochastic processes and the Monte Carlo method, respectively. Sanz Fermandez de Cordoba and Gonzales discuss important practical implications of the use of reliability methods. The former refers to the aerospace industry. The latter considers nuclear power plants. Session 2 presents some advances in systems reliability techniques. The paper by Contini and Poucet illustrates the mathematical analysis of fault trees and event trees. It includes a discussion on the logical analysis of non-coherent fault trees and considerations on the major measures of criticality and importance of a component. The paper by Babbio is devoted to Petri nets. First, the formalism of this relatively new technique is given. Then, stochastic Petri nets are introduced as a tool to describe the behaviour of systems in time. Finally, by some fully developed examples, it is shown how this approach can be used to represent and evaluate complex stochastic systems. Limnios introduces the notion of failure delay systems and gives the lifetime structure for the evaluation of reliability measures. A reservoir is studied as an example of a failure delay system. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Stochastic Processes, Markov Chains and Systems Availability....Pages 3-22 The Monte Carlo Method....Pages 23-43 Availability: A Practical Approach on Aerospace Industry....Pages 45-64 Reliability in Nuclear Power Plant Operations....Pages 65-74 Front Matter....Pages 75-75 Advances on Fault Tree and Event Tree Techniques....Pages 77-102 System Modelling with Petri Nets....Pages 103-143 Failure Delay Systems Reliability Modelling....Pages 145-158 The Dylam Approach to Systems Safety Analysis....Pages 159-182 Dylam-Treta. An Approach to Protection Systems Software Analysis....Pages 183-203 Front Matter....Pages 205-205 Human Reliability Models....Pages 207-230 Fixation Errors: Failures to Revise Situation Assessment in Dynamic and Risky Systems....Pages 231-251 Theories of Mechanical Reasoning Under Uncertainty....Pages 253-272 Reliability Parameter Estimation by Combination of Data from Various Sources....Pages 273-283 Uncertainty Modelling in Systems Reliability Analysis....Pages 285-303 Back Matter....Pages 305-310 Proceedings of the Ispra Course held at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros Navales, Madrid, Spain, September 19-23, 1988 in collaboration with Universidad Politecnica de Madrid