Modeling Expected Failure Considering Repair Time and Degradation: A Rail System Case Study

The repeated failures of any equipment or systems are modeled as a renewal process. The management needs an assessment of the number of future failures to allocate the resources needed for fast repairs. Based on the idea of expectation by conditioning, special Volterra-type integral equations are derived for general types of repairs, considering the length of repair and reduced degradation of the idle object. In addition to minimal repair and failure replacement, partial repairs are also discussed when the repair results in reduction of the number of future failures or decreases the effective age of the object. Numerical integration-based algorithm and simulation study are performed to solve the resulting integral equation. Since the geometry degradation in different dimensions of a rail track and controlling and maintaining defects are of importance, a numerical example using the rail industry data is conducted. Expected number of failures of different failure type modes in rail track is calculated within a two-year interval. Results show that within a two-year period, anticipated occurrences of cross level failures, surface failures, and DPI failures are 2.4, 3.8, and 5.8, respectively.

Energy analysis of stability of twin shallow tunnels based on nonlinear failure criterion

Based on nonlinear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, the analytical solutions of stability number and supporting force on twin shallow tunnels were derived using upper bound theorem of limit analysis. The optimized solutions were obtained by the technique of sequential quadratic programming. When nonlinear coefficient equals 1 and internal friction angle equals 0, the nonlinear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion degenerates into linear failure criterion. The calculated results of stability number in this work were compared with previous results, and the agreement verifies the effectiveness of the present method. Under the condition of nonlinear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, the results show that the supporting force on twin shallow tunnels obviously increases when the nonlinear coefficient, burial depth, ground load or pore water pressure coefficients increase. When the clear distance is 0.5to 1.0 times the diameter of tunnel, the supporting force of twin shallow tunnels reaches its maximum value, which means that the tunnels are the easiest to collapse. While the clear distance increases to 3.5 times the diameter of tunnel, the calculation for twin shallow tunnels can be carried out by the method for independent single shallow tunnel. Therefore, 3.5 times the diameter of tunnel serves as a critical value to determine whether twin shallow tunnels influence each other. In designing twin shallow tunnels,appropriate clear distance value must be selected according to its change rules and actual topographic conditions, meanwhile, the influences of nonlinear failure criterion of soil materials and pore water must be completely considered. During the excavation process, supporting system should be intensified at the positions of larger burial depth or ground load to avoid collapses.

A Two-Unit Cold Standby Repairable System with One Replaceable Repair Facility and Delay Repair: Some Reliability Problems

This paper considers a two–unit same cold standby repairable system with a replaceable repair facility and delay repair .The failure time of unit is assumed to follow exponential distribution , and the repair time and delay time of failed unit are assumed to follow arbitrary distributions , whereas the failure and replacement time distributions of the repair facility are exponential and arbitrary . By using the Markov renewal process theory, some primary reliability quantities of the system are obtained.

Revisiting the Model of Servicing Machines with Repairable Service Facility-A New Analyzing Idea and Some New Results

In this paper the model of servicing machines with repairable facility is further studied.By standard conditioning decomposition argument,two reliability indices-the probability that the service facility fails at time t and the expected number of failure occurring during（0,t] are discussed.Some important relations of them are given.Furthermore,some new reliability problems are presented and discussed as follows：1） The numbers of the service facility failures during the generalized service time and the generalized busy period;2） The asymptotic expansion of the expected failure number of the service facility during（0,t].A series of new reliability results of the service facility are obtained.

Some Reliability Problems Arising in the M^x/G(M/G)/1 Repairable Queueing System with Single Delay Vacation

On the basis of Ref.\, the M x/G(M/G)/1 repairable queueing system with single delay vacation is discussed again. The following reliability problems of the service station are studied: (a) The probability that it fails at time t , i.e. its unavailability; (b) The expected failure number during the time interval (0,t\];; (c) The expected failure number during the ″server busy period″; (d) The expected downtime during the time interval (0,t\]. Some reliability results of the service station are obtained. These results would be interest to reliability analysts.