******* This page is under development and will during the spring and summer of 2014 be subject to many changes.****
TPK 5170 RAMS Assessment and Optimization
 | ...adds new methods to your RAMS toolbox and new skills in the application of these. |
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course
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This course is the specialization course in reliability, availability, maintenance and safety (RAMS) in the last fall semester of the (2 year) international master program in RAMS and the (5 year) master program in Mechanical Engineering (in Norwegian: Produktdesign og Produksjon - PUP). The course
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introduces some new methods, and makes a more thorough presentation of methods introduced in previous RAMS-related courses.
The course belongs to the large envelope of RAMS courses given from the department of Production and Quality Engineering at NTNU. The course is adminstred by the RAMS group at this department. It is expected that the students already have taken (or have relevant background corresponding to):
- TPK 4120: Safety and Reliability
- TPK 4140: Maintenance Management
- TPK 5160: Risk Analysis
This course replaces the earlier arrangement with two specialization modules in RAMS, one in risk and reliability and one in maintenance optimization (each with 3.75 credit points). This means that TPK 5170 includes some subjects from both areas: risik and reliability and maintenance optimization, and gives 7.5 credits (i.e., as a regular course normally does at NTNU).
- You may ask why this is necessary, if the you (for example) are focusing mainly on risk analysis in the specialization project and master thesis. The answer is rather simple: This course should give you the remaining topics that we - as a RAMS group - think you should have when you leave NTNU with a specialization in RAMS.
It may be remarked that this course may, from the fall of 2015, change the name to "Asset management methods". A new course in "Reliability of safety-critical systems" ("SIS course") will at the same time be introduced (from spring 2015). Topics related to reliability assessment will be transferred to the new ("SIS") course, and it is planned that TPK 5170 with its new profile will expand on topics related to maintenance optimization and the estimation of remaining useful life. The changes will be available http://www.ntnu.edu/studies/courses, once implemented. |
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The responsible person for TPK 5170 in the fall of 2014 is Professor Mary Ann Lundteigen. She will give approximately 50% of the lectures. Since this is a specialization course, some "specialists" are brought in for specific topics. For example, Associate Professor Yiliu Liu will lecture methods like PetriNets. Lectures that belong to the topic maintenance optimization are planned to be lectures by our new Professor Anne Barros.
Course objective and motivation
The main objective of this course is to increase the depth of understanding about RAMS assessment. Sometimes the purpose of the assessment is to determine the reliability requirements or to determine the reliability of system functions in light of safety requirements. At other times, the purpose is to minimize costs or downtime of the systems, by considering different maintenance strategies.
| Think about a system. This system may constitute many different parts and together they shall perform many different functions. Systems may be production-critical, safety-critical, or even both. Safety-critical systems are used to protect personnel from injury and death, or to protect the environment from severe damages. Production-critical systems may, if they fail, cost "a whole lot", and have a severe effect on a manufacturer reputation, the quality of products developed, and the costs associated with correcting the system after failure. Critical infrastructures may be consideres as both production and safety-critical. Stable and safe public transportation, clean and stable water supply, power supply, and net supply are important for serving the society and business, and a failure of these could affect safety at a local level as well as at a national level. |
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Some key questions to ask in relation to such systems are shown in the figure below, and in many cases, they need to be solved using RAMS assessment and optimization methods.
This means that methods already introduced in other courses are studied in more detail, with assistance of new application examples and new perspectives. Some new methods are also introduced so that the students, after having taken the course, will have a heavy weighted toolbox of methods to use in their future work tasks.
Expected learning outcome
Knowledge:
Obtain a more thorough understanding of the theoretical foundation and the practical applications of RAMS assessment and optimization methods.
Skills:
Being able to identify suitable frameworks, methods, and software and to use these to solve RAMS assessment and optimization tasks.
General competence:
Understand RAMS as an important cornerstone of industrial and commercial systems and in the public administration.
Industry relevance
Reliability assessments of safety-critical systems are key services provided by many consultancy companies, such as with Safetec, Lloyd's Register Consulting, and DNV-GL (link to the GL-part of the services), and Lilleaker Consulting. Manufacturers like ABB, Siemens, AkerSolutions, FMC, Kongsberg Maritime and many others need to design systems in light of reliability requirements, and also demonstrate (sometimes with assistance of the consultancy companies) that the reliability requirements are met. End users, like railway service providers like Jernbaneverket, oil companies like Statoil, Det Norske, GDF-Suez, Shell and Conoco-Phillips, and Wintershall and other industries like smelting plants and water power suppliers must be competent to select proper system design, follow up the system performance and select the most suitable maintenance strategies to keep costs and safety within the accpetable limits.
Topics covered
With the prevailing profile of the course, there are two main subject areas of this course: 
Reliability assessment methods with focus on the application with safety-critical systems, and Maintenance optimization models and methods which have a broader application area.
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Reliability assessment of safety-critical systems
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- Lecturer: Mary Ann Lundteigen
- The first lecture will be held on Tuesday August 19th 8:15-11:00 in VG13
- Course description is found here
- General information about the course (motivation, learning objectives, and related information) is found here
- The lecture plan for the entire semester is found here
- The time table is found here
- Textbook and course material are from:
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Lectured topic
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Development of reliability requirements
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SIL allocation
LOPA
Risk graph
Minimum SIL
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PDS method
PetriNet
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Architectural constraints: According to standards like IEC 61508, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that a SIL requirement has been met by showing that the average PFD or PFH is sufficiently low and within the specified range of the SIL requirement. A SIL requirement also poses some restrictions on how a safety-critical function can be designed, in terms of architecture. These requirements are sometimes referred to as architectural constraints.
Partial testing: For some type of components, like valves, it has been more common to also do partial stroke testing in addition to full functional testing. The reason for introdocing this testing strategy may be to improve safety, or to maintain safety while extending the intervall of full function testing. Analytical models have been suggested for this purpose, and we will review these.
Imperfect testing: Many of the methods used to calculate the average PFD assumes that the functional tests are perfect, meaning that all dangerous undetected (DU) falures are revealed by the test. This is not always the case, and the effect of not taking this "imperfectness" into account will be that the average PFD is underestimated. The way this situation is treated overlaps to some extent with how partial testing is modeled.
SIL follow-up in operation: It is important to maintain the reliability performance throughout the whole operational life of a safety-critical system. This may explained by using a car as an example. You may buy a car with a certain designed-in performance, including reliability, based on the engine type, safety features, type of chassis, and so on. Still, the experienced performance of the same type of car may be different for different drivers. If we exclude fabrication errors, the performance of the car is influenced by the driver's driving habits, amount of driving, environment (icy, cold, hot,..), age and so on.
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Architectural constraints
Partial stroke testing
Imperfect testing
SIL follow-up
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Maintenance optimization and management
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The intervals of maintenance for safety-critical systems are normally determined from the reliability analyses. For other systems, we may use decide upon intervals of testing using different maintenance strategies. These models include parameters like costs, failure rates, and aging. The models come of with the answer to the following two questions: When should we do maintenance and what tasks and equipment should be included. The application of these methods are many. Two examples are maintenance planning of railway tracks and another is planning of intervention (for maintenance purposes) of subsea equipment. Sub-topics also covered under the same "umbrella" are:
- Modeling of effective failure rate: Maintenance interval and and intervention level (extensiveness of maintenance) is obviously influencing the failure rate of the components. This topic concerns the modeling of the relationship between these two parameters and what we can refer to as the effective (or resulting) failure rate.
- Weibull renewal: **Say something here**
- PF models and state based models: **Say something here**
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- Maintenance optimization lecture notes
- Additional material will be uploaded on its' learning
- Information about tutorials and exercises is found here
- Exam:
- There will be a written exam. It is not allowed to bring any other material to this exam than a calculator and a table of formula (the latter is prepared during the semester by the lecturer)
- More information about the exam is found here
Tutorials & Project
There will be mandatory problems/tasks to solve as part of the course.
| Topic | Problems | Software |
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| Reliability assessment | Problems will be selected from the following booklet | Matlab, Maple, Grif |
| Maintenance optimization | Problems will be .... | Excel |
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