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   How To Evaluate The Reliability Of A System Or Process

   60% of failures and safety issues can be prevented by ensuring

there is a robust equipment design and that Maintenance &
Reliability is taken into account during the design phase.
Phone: (519)567-2169 Equipment should be designed with the following in mind;
[email protected]
 

Search...  Designed for Fault Tolerance

Designed to Fail Safely
Designed with early warning of the failure to the user
Designed with a built-in diagnostic system to identify fault location
Designed to eliminate all or critical failure modes cost effectively, if possible.

To ensure that the equipment design is capable or yielding our requirements an analysis needs to be performed
on the design to ensure the system or process can deliver. There is much different analysis available to perform
the analysis, but a relatively simple and widely accepted approach is the Reliability Block Diagram.

Reliability Block Diagram

The Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) is used to identify potential areas of poor reliability and where
improvements can be made to lower the failure rates for the equipment. This method can be used in both the
design and operational phase to identify poor reliability and provide targeted improvements.

The RBD shows the logical connections of components within a piece of equipment. It is not necessarily the
schematic diagram of the equipment, but the functional components of the system. The equipment is made up of
multiple components/systems in series, parallel and a combination of the two. These components/systems and
configuration of them provides us with the inherent reliability of the equipment. The RBD analysis consists of
reducing the system to simple series and parallel blocks which can be analyzed using the appropriate Reliability
formula. Reliability typically utilizes three main formulas;

Reliability;

Reliability(Mission Time) = e-λt

λ (lambda) = Failure rate = 1/MTBF

t = mission time in cycles, hours, miles, etc.

e = natural logarithm = 2.71828

Reliability(System) = R1 x R2 x R3 x R4 x ….RN
Reliability(Active Redundant Parallel System) = 1 – (1 – R1)(1 – R2)

Now that the Reliability formulas are understood, the RBD can be built. A simple series RBD is shown as;

Simple Series RBD

 A simple parallel RBD is shown as;

Simple Parallel RBD

When analyzing a parallel system in the RBD, the operating context of the parallel system must be
understood; is the parallel system an active redundant system or are all or a portion of the parallel branches
   are required to operate the equipment?

  

Phone: (519)567-2169
[email protected]

Parallel RBD
Search... 

In the above example R5, R6 & R7 are all active redundant branches, so the equipment only needs 1 of the
three branches to operate and meet its required performance.

Parallel RBD

In the opposite example, we have a system that requires 2 out of the three branches to operate at any given
time. This means that R8 & R9, R8 & R10, or R9 & R10 must be in working order meets its required
performance.

There are a few different Reliability calculations for the system that requires x amount of y parallel branches
to operate, and they are in the table below.

x number of branches out of y Reliability Equation

1 out of 2 1-(1-R)2
2 out of 2 R2

1 out of 3 1-(1-R)3
2 out of 3 R3 + 3 R2 (1-R)
3 out of 3 R3

1 out of 4 1-(1-R)4
2 out of 4 R4 + 4 R3 (1-R) + 6 R2 (1-
3 out of 4 R)2
4 out of 4
R4 + 4 R3 (1-R)

R4

Calculating Reliability of a System

In this example, a pumping system is required to provide a reliability of 90%. The pumping system
(simplified for explanation purposes) could be broken into an RBD and shown as;
    Sample System RBD

  
The Blocks reflect the various systems in the equipment;

R1 = Inlet control valve

Phone: (519)567-2169 R2 = Motors (R2.1 = Motor 1, R2.2 = Motor 2, R2.3 = Motor 3) (This requires all 3 of the parallel
[email protected] branches to operate)
R3 = Fluid Supply
R4 = Distribution Manifold
Search... 
R5 = Tank Level Sensor
R6 = Pumps (these are all required to operate the asset and is therefore not a redundant system)
R7 = Discharge Control Valve
R8 = Control System

Once the RBD has been developed, we then need to determine the Reliability of each block and the overall
system. We will use the pumping system as our example;

Using the Reliability formula and either the vendor’s data and the history of like assets, the reliability must
be calculated for each of the individual blocks and populate them with the reliability value.

Sample System RBD with Reliability Values

Next, the reliability of R2 is calculated. Since it requires all three systems to operate a simple parallel
formula would be used;

R2 = R 3

R2 = (.99)3
R2 = .97

Next the same is done for R6

R6 = R3

R6 = (.98)3
R6 = .94

Lastly, since R4 is dependent on R3 & R5 it should treat it as a series system.

 R = R3 x R4 x R5

R = .9 x 1 x .85
R = .76

Next, the RBD can be simplified to a simple series system;

Condensed RBD

   R = R8 x R1 x R2 x R345 x R6 x R7

   R = .99 x .99 x .97 x .76 x .94 x .99

R = .67

Phone: (519)567-2169
In the calculation, it can be observed that the pumping system with a Reliability of 0.67 will not meet our
[email protected]
needs. What can be observed is that R345 is the lowest point of Reliability so improvements in the design
should be directed there. If the design was changed for R345 and reliability brought up to .99, the pumping
Search...  system would still fall short of the required reliability at .88, so design team must look for additional blocks
for improvements and also how the system is arranged and possibly introduce active redundant systems.

Are You Using Reliability Block Diagrams?

How many of you are using RBDs in your design or improvement process? What benefits have you found in
using them? For those not using RBDs, what is preventing you from using them?

In the next post, RBD will be discussed in additional detail, discussing the Markov Method, Network Models
and a practical example of them.

Remember, to find success; you must first solve the problem, then achieve the implementation of the
solution, and finally sustain winning results.

I’m James Kovacevic

Eruditio, LLC
Where Education Meets Application
Follow @EruditioLLC

References

BQR
BQR Video Library
Fixtress Software Package
CARE Software Package
APMOptimizer Software Package

By James Kovacevic | July 17th, 2017 | Defect Elimination, Reliability Engineering | 3 Comments

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