Rare Event Simulation to Optimise Maintenance Intervals of Safety Critical Redundant Subsystems

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Published Jun 30, 2018
Raphael Pfaff Karin Melcher Julian Franzen

Abstract

In the railway sector, many redundant subsystem structures are applied to increase the safety and availability of the overall railway system. Failures to single paths of these structures occur and are found during routine inspection. Routine inspections are, depending on their type and the equipment location, quite costly and limit the vehicle availablity.

The present paper analyses occurrences based on simulated data resembling field data of a fleet of rail vehicles. The system is analysed statistically to identify the wear mechanisms leading to the failures. Failure data is then used to identify wear models which are consequently used in a Markov Chain (MC) to simulate the probability of multiple path failure.

The failure rate of the overall system is typically expected to be in the range $\left(10^{-9}\cdots10^{-6}\right)\, \mathrm{h}^{-1}$ due to the safety critical nature of the railway system. For this reason, it is required to apply rare event simulation techniques to the MC simulation in order to limit the number of simulations.

The simulation results are then applied to an optimisation of the inspection routine, which yields an appropriate failure rate for the associated hazards.

How to Cite

Pfaff, R., Melcher, K., & Franzen, J. (2018). Rare Event Simulation to Optimise Maintenance Intervals of Safety Critical Redundant Subsystems. PHM Society European Conference, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.36001/phme.2018.v4i1.433
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Keywords

Rare Event Simulation, Maintenance development

Section
Technical Papers