13

Technical Note

Data sources for reliability design analysis

T R Moss, MPhil, CEng, FIMechE, FIQA
Reliability Consultant, Abingdon, Berkshire
J E Strutt, BSc, DPhil, MSUT
Centre for Industrial Safety and Reliability, Cranfield Institute of Technology, Bedfordshire

Quantijied reliability assessment is now employed by many organizations in the process industries. The objective is to identify critical
areas in the plant where design changes are required to meet the safety or production specification. Mechanical system assessment is,
however, frequently inhibited by the lack of representative equipment reliability data. Where these data are not available in-house
recourse must be made to generic sources from the public domain. Members of the Process Industries Divisions Mechanical Reliability
Committee have recently completed a study to identify and evaluate the principal reliability data sources for use in process system
assessments. This paper discusses the data requirements for reliability assessment and the use of these generic data to provide best-
estimates of the reliability statistics for specific applications.

1 INTRODUCTION Such an assessment should identify the major hazards

The use of quantitative reliability analysis to optimize
safety and productivity of new and existing plant has
become widespread in the process industries. Effective
use of the technique does, however, require access to
statistics on the failure and repair characteristics of
equipment. Unfortunately sources of such information
are relatively sparse in the literature and significant time
must be spent to assemble a database of relevant relia-
bility statistics for each study.
To address this problem a sub-group of the IMechE
Mechanical Reliability Committee has carried out a
number of studies over the past 5 years aimed at iden-
tifying and evaluating the main sources of generic relia-
bility data for mechanical equipment. The information
has now been summarized on to a series of data sheets
for publication later this year in the second edition of
the Process Industries Divisions guide to reliability
assessment (1).
This paper discusses the basis for reliability studies of
process systems and demonstrates how information
from these data sources can be applied to generate best-
estimate reliability statistics for specific equipment.
2 RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT
2.1 General
Assessing the reliability of a process plant design
involves an analysis of the ways a system can fail from
consideration of its sub-system and equipment failure
characteristics. A system model is developed and infor-
mation based on past performance of similar equipment
is then employed in the model to predict the probability
of failure in the critical system failure modes. Typically
the assessment will involve four main stages, namely :
System definition
Hazard and operability studies
Reliability modelling
Sensitivity analysis
The M S was received on 19 January 1993 and was accepted for publication on
20 January 1993.
E00293 0 IMechE 1993
(safety or production hazards depending on the focus of
the study) and the equipment failures that are most
likely to lead to the materialization of the hazard.
Depending on the consequences of system failure it may
then be necessary t o consider introducing some
redundancy or diversity, of critical equipment, the
reduction of hazardous material inventories or changes
in maintenance or test procedures to improve the relia-
bility of the system and reduce the hazards associated
with system failure.
2.2 System definition
Most engineering systems are complex to some degree
and the reliability assessment will, therefore, need to
follow a consistent, logical approach, It is always neces-
sary to define the objectives of the assessment and the
functional attributes of the system at an early stage in
the study. The objectives may be safety or productivity
orientated. If safety is the prime concern the assessor
may need to evaluate the hazards to people living near
the plant and the environment as well as to plant per-
sonnel and the process. If it is a production reliability
study, is the objective to increase plant availability gen-
erally or for peak demand, to study maintenance or test
procedures, spares holdings, manning levels or other
aspects of plant performance? A clear definition of the
systems function and the objectives of the assessment is
the best guarantee that a clear set of recommendations
and required actions will be generated by the reliability
study. It is also a help, of course, in defining the data
requirements.
2.3 Hazard and operability studies
Understanding how the system functions in its different
operational modes is obviously important. In very few
cases is this information available at the start of a
reliability assessment. Where different disciplines are
involved quite different requirements for system oper-
ation can be revealed. Many problems are in fact due to
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14
inconsistencies at interfaces-interfaces between disci-
plines as well as between sub-systems. A simplified
description of the plant and the operational require-
ments in the different operating modes should always be
prepared at the start of the assessment and agreed with
design, maintenance and operations engineers.
The reliability engineer will generally develop a sim-
plified functional block diagram to support the system
description. In many process plant design studies a
hazard and operability (HAZOP) study will also be
carried out. Hazard and operability studies are well
described in the Chemical Industries Association guide
(2). The HAZOP meetings will be chaired by a senior
manager and involve engineers and scientists from rele-
vant disciplines. The meetings will consider the conse-
quences of deviation from the design intention for each
major equipment and sub-system. HAZOP studies are
generally based on functional block diagrams and the
piping and instrumentation drawings. Guide words are
employed to stimulate the identification of possible
failure modes and the consequences of deviations from
normal, steady state operation. Typically these guide
words are:
none no flow, no pressure, no cooling, etc.
more of more flow, temperature, pressure, etc.
less of reduced flow, temperature, pressure,
etc.
part of only some of the intentions are
achieved, say component A is missing
from the process stream, etc.
other than say, impurities present, ingress of air,
water, acids, etc.
The step-by-step analysis of the various sub-sections
of the plant by the HAZOP study provides a valuable
insight into the potentially hazardous areas and oper-
ations. From the standpoint of the reliability engineer it
also helps to identify the important failure modes and
the sub-systems and equipment that need particular
attention in the reliability assessment.
2.4 System reliability models
Reliability can be defined as: the probability that an
item (system, equipment or component) will successfully
perform its required function for a specified period of
time under specified conditions. Clearly the probability
of success will change with time. For many equipments,
however, reliability behaviour can be represented by the
well-known reliability bath-tub curve shown in Fig. 1.
The three phases of the bath tub represent (a) burn-in
when sub-standard components are weeded out, (b)
useful life when failures are relatively infrequent and
I I I The effect of uncertainties in the data can be explored
I I
I t
Fig. 1 Reliability bath-tub curve
Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering
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T R MOSS AND J E STRUTT
randomly distributed with time and (c) wear-out when
the equipment is no longer meeting its design specifi-
cation and needs replacement.
For many system reliability assessments the initial
assumption is that all equipment operates in the useful
life phase when the failure rate is virtually constant.
Consideration may be given at a later stage to the
effects of different (say, time-dependent) failure charac-
teristics for the sub-systems identified as critical to plant
operation.
For equipment operating in the useful life phase the
probability of success (reliability) over a period of time t
can be represented by the simple expression:
R(t) = e-[
where e is the base of natural logarithms, ;1 is the
equipment failure rate and t is the time interval. Its
complement, the probability of failure in time t, is
F(t) = 1 - e-
These expressions refer to systems that are deemed
unrepairable after failure. For repairable systems relia-
bility is defined by the equipments steady state avail-
ability, where
mean up-time - MTTF
A=
total time MTTF + MTTR
Here MTTF is the mean time to failure (= l/A) and
MTTR is the mean time to repair. Its complement,
unavailability, is
mean down-time - MTTR
U =
total time MTTF + MTTR
The system reliability model is developed from the
plant functional block diagram via system and sub-
system reliability block diagrams, failure or success
logic diagrams or fault trees. These techniques involve
the logical combination of equipment failure probabil-
ities (or unavailabilities) to generate sub-system and
system failure probabilities. The methods are fully
described with examples, in the IMechE Process
Industries Divisions guide to reliability assessment (1).
2.5 Sensitivity analysis
The uncertainties associated with quantitative reliability
assessments are due to two basic causes:
(a) uncertainties in the reliability model,
(b) uncertainties in the data.
Uncertainties in the model reflect the assumptions
implicit in the system definition. Any representation of a
system will be a simplification so there will always be
some incompleteness in the reliability model. In most
cases, however, the objective of the reliability study will
be to compare different design alternatives; in these
situations the modelling uncertainties are likely to
cancel out.
by techniques such as sensitivity analysis. Sensitivity
analysis involves changing the value of the failure rate
(or unavailability) for each equipment in turn by a small
Q IMechE 1993
 DATA SOURCES FOR RELIABILITY DESIGN ANALYSIS
amount and then recalculating the system failure prob-
ability. The effect of changes in equipment failure char-
acteristics can then be compared with the contribution
from other equipments.
The option to run a sensitivity analysis is often
included in the computer programs available to evalu-
ate reliability models. In addition to routines for the
logical combination of failure events and calculations of
system reliability the programs usually provide options
to calculate the effect of changes in failure rates,
unavailabilities, repair times and test intervals for each
equipment. The sensitivity for each failure event i will
be
s.= % change in system failure probability
% change in value of event i
When the sensitivities have all been calculated they
are listed in order of importance. It is then possible to
identify those equipments that have the most effect on
the system reliability calculations. Where these effects
are significant it is worth while reviewing the data
sources employed for estimating specific equipment
failure rates. At this stage generic data may not be ade-
quate and it is then necessary to obtain a more repre-
sentative estimate by collecting and analysing failure
experience from similar applications or by techniques
such as failure mode and effect analysis.
3 DATA REQUIREMENTS
To calculate the reliability or availability of a system
requires information on equipment failure rates and
repair times. It is important that these calculations are
based on the equipment failure and repair modes that
have a direct impact on the system capability to meet a
specific functional requirement. These failure and repair
modes are seldom clearly defined in the reliability data
available. For example, interest may focus on failures
that could generate a potentially dangerous system
System Engineering Design/ Process
description
disciplines construction parameters
data data
r
Failure rates
Fig. 2 D a t a requirements for reliability assessment
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15
failure, say an unrevealed failure of a control valve
which inhibits operation of the plant fire water system.
One well-known data source gives an overall failure
rate of 30 failures/million hours for control valves.
Others may give the proportion of failures in the differ-
ent failure modes as
Leakage 50%
Actuator 30%
Seize 10%
Others 10%
Not all of these failure modes will inhibit system oper-
ation; for example leakage from the valve (unless gross)
is unlikely to materially affect the systems ability to
provide fire water on demand. It is, therefore, necessary
to adjust the control valve failure rate to reflect only
those failures that could contribute to a potentially
dangerous failure of the fire water system. It may be
assumed that actuator failures (30 per cent), seizure (10
per cent) and half the other failures (5 per cent) could
fail the fire water system so the control valve failure
rate used in calculating the probability of the fire water
system failure on demand would be 13.5 failures/million
h (that is 45 per cent of 30 failures/million h). In all
reliability assessments it is important that the calculated
system failure probability is based only on the
equipment failure modes that could provoke a system
failure. In most cases this failure rate is significantly less
than the overall failure rate of the equipment.
The data requirements for reliability studies are
shown in Fig. 2, taken from reference (l), which also
contains a more detailed discussion of the various
failure and repair statistics required in reliability assess-
ments.
4 GENERIC DATA SOURCES
Published sources of failure and repair statistics are
quite limited, particularly for mechanical equipment. A
Mean active Mean
repair times waiting times
Unrevealed
rates
Proc Instn Mech Engrs Vol 207
16 T R MOSS AND J E STRUTT

Table 1 Principal reliability data sources

Data source Title Publisher and date
1. CCPS Guidelines for process equipment reliability American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1990
2. Davenport and Warwick A further survey of pressure vessels in the AEA Technology-Safety and Reliability Directorate, 1991
UK 1983-1988
3. DEFSTAN 0041, Part 3 MOD practices and procedures for reliability Ministry of Defence, 1983
and maintainability, Part 3, Reliability
prediction
4. R. F. de la Mare Pipeline reliability; report 80-0572 Det Norske Veritas/Bradford University, 1980
5 . Dexter and Perkins Component failure rate data with potential EI Du Pont de Nemours and Company, USA, 1982
applicability to a nuclear fuel reprocessing
plant, report DP-1633
6. EIREDA European industry reliability data handbook, EUROSTAT, Paris, 1991
Vol. 1, Electrical power plants
7. EN1 Data Book EN1 reliability data bank-component Ente Nazionale Indrocarburi (ENI), Milan, 1982
reliability handbook
8. Green and Bourne Reliability technology Wiley Interscience, London, 1972
9. IAEA TECDOC 478 Component reliability data for use in International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1988
probabilistic safety assessment
10. IEEE Std 500-1984 IEEE guide to the collection and presentation Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, New
of electrical, electronic sensing component York, 1983
and mechanical equipment reliability data
for nuclear power generating stations
11. F. P. Lees Loss prevention in the process industries Butterworth, London 1980
12. MIL-HDBK 217E Military handbook-reliability prediction of US Department of Defense, 1986
electronic equipment, Issue E
13. NPRD-3 Non-electronic component reliability data Reliability Analysis Centre, RADC, New York, 1985
handbook-NPRD-3
14. OREDA 84 Ofshore relibility data (OREDA) handbook OREDA, Hovik, Norway, 1984
15. OREDA 92 Offshore reliability data, 2nd edition DnV Technica, Norway, 1992
16. RKSjSKI 85-25 Reliability data book for components in Swedish RKS-Nuclear Safety Board of the Swedish Utilities and
nuclear power plants SKI-Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, 1987
17. H. A. Rothbart Mechanical design and systems handbook McGraw-Hill, 1964
18. D. J. Smith Reliability and maintainability in perspective Macmillan, London, 1985
19. Smith and Warwick A survey of defects in pressure vessels in the AEA Technology-Safety and Reliability Directorate, 1981
UK (1962-1978) and its relevance to primary
circuits, report SRD R203
20. WASH 1400 Reactor safety study. An assessment of US Atomic Energy Commission, 1974
accident risks in U S commercial nuclear
power plants, Appendix 111, Failure data

sub-group of the IMechE Mechanical Reliability Com-
mittee has therefore carried out a number of studies to
identify and evaluate the main sources of mechanical
reliability data currently available. This information will
be published later this year as a series of data sheets in
the second edition of the Process Industries Divisions
guide to reliability assessment (1). The data sheets were
prepared by members of the Data Acquisition Working
Party who are all practising reliability engineers. The
principal sources identified and evaluated by the
Working Party are shown in Table 1. The majority are
in the public domain. Although the Working Party has
concentrated on reviewing sources of mechanical rather
than electronic data, many of the sources include both.
The cross reference table (Table 2) indicates the type of
equipment covered in the data source documents. Table
3 shows typical components within the equipment cate-
gories shown in Table 2. An example data sheet is
shown in Fig. 3.
In preparing the data sheets the Working Party has
not offered any judgement as to the quality, applicabil-
ity or validity of the data contained within them. The
sole purpose has been to provide guidance on a number
of useful sources and their content for engineers with
a need for numerical mechanical reliability data.
However, it must be said that it is extremely unlikely
that better data sources exist in the published literature
at the present time.
Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering
5 GENERIC RELIABILITY DATA ANALYSIS
For new plant designs there is clearly no experience of
actual reliability performance that can be used in the
assessment. In these circumstances it is necessary to
employ generic data from source documents such as
those listed in Table 1. These data will also need adjust-
ment for the differences in the operating duty and
environmental conditions of the proposed design and
those reflected by the generic data. Unfortunately the
operational and environmental conditions are seldom
identifiable from the source data. Assumptions must
therefore be made and engineering judgement applied
when compiling a reliability database for any particular
safety or availability assessment.
The sources of data will also be of varying quality. In
the best cases the data will be comprehensive with infor-
mation on the engineering and functional characteristics
of the equipment to complement the estimates of failure
rate in the principal failure modes. This engineering and
functional information could include definitions of the
boundaries of the equipment, the environment and
operational duty, the number of failures observed in
each failure mode, the size of the equipment sample
population and the length of the surveillance period. In
other cases, however, the information will be very
restricted, possibly confined to an overall failure rate
estimate for a general class of equipment. Thus, when
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 DATA SOURCES FOR RELIABILITY DESIGN ANALYSIS 17

Table 2 Cross reference between principle data sources-equipment type

Equipment
Reference Application* Rotating Static Instrument Safety Process Electrical
1. CCPS I Y Y Y Y Y Y
2. Davenport and Warwick NI - Y - - - -
3. DEFSTAN 0041, Part 3 M Y Y Y Y Y Y
4. de la Mare 0 - Y - - - -
5. Dexter and Perkins, DP-1633 NI Y Y Y Y Y Y
6. EIREDA NI Y Y Y Y Y Y
7. EN1 I Y Y Y Y Y Y
8. Green and Bourne NI Y Y Y Y Y Y
9. IAEA TECDOC 478 N Y Y Y Y Y Y
10. IEEE Std 500 I Y - Y Y - Y
11. Lees NI Y Y Y Y Y Y
12. MIL-HDBK 217E M Y Y - Y - Y
13. NPRD-3 NI Y Y Y Y - Y
14. OREDA 84 0 Y Y Y Y Y Y
15. OREDA 92 0 Y Y Y Y Y Y
16. RKS 85-25 NI Y Y Y Y - Y
17. Rothbart I Y Y Y Y - Y
18. Smith NI Y Y Y Y Y Y
19. Smith and Warwick NI - Y - - - -
20. WASH 1400 N Y Y Y Y - Y
* 0 = offshore, N = nuclear, I = industrial, M = military.
Note: Table 2 should be used in conjunction with Table 1.

Table 3 Typical components within equipment categories assembling a reliability database for a specific study the
Equipment category Typical components objective should always be to identify as many represen-
tative data sources as possible and to employ the com-
1. Rotating equipment Pumps, compressors, turbines, motors
2. Static equipment Pipes, pipelines, flowlines, valves, vessels bined information to derive best-estimates of the
3. Instrumentation Sensors (temperature, pressure, level, equipment failure rate and its principal failure modes
etc.) and controllers before making adjustments for specific applications.
4. Safety Fire pumps, safety valves, fire/gas/smoke For electronic components where the sample data are
detectors
5. Process Pumps, compressors, valves, vessels,
compiled from tests on large populations of com-
piping ponents under controlled conditions, it is reasonable to
6. Electrical Cables, motors, circuit boards, lamps treat the data from a number of different sources as a
Note: it should be noted that these categories are not intended to be mutually
single homogeneous sample and calculate a mean
exclusive. For example, pumps can be categorized as both rotating and process. failure rate. For mechanical equipment the situation is

Data source: CCPS

Full name: Guidelines for process equipment reliability, with data tables prepared by the
Equipment Reliability Subcommittee of the Centre for Chemical Process Safety
and Science Applications International Corporation
Published by: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Type of source: Book
Date of publication: 1990
Type of components: A wide range of chemical process equipment
Number of types of components: 76 process equipment types
Type of information: Failure rates based on both calender and operating time; failures on demand are also
included where appropriate
Source of data: Data sources include plant specific data and generic data. Plant specific data reflects
plants process, environment and maintenance practices. Generic data was collated
from a variety of sources. All major published sources of available generic
equipment reliability and failure rate data were used, including reliability studies,
published research works, reliability data banks, government reports containing
information gathered from chemical process, nuclear, offshore oil and fossil fuel
industries around the world.
Type of data: The data are characterized as equipment failures per lo6 operating hours for
time-related failure rates and failures per lo3 demands for demand-related failure
rates. Rates are given for common chemical process equipment. Equipment used
for transport of chemicals are not covered. The cause of equipment failures, the
means to improve reliability and the most reliable equipment are not addressed.

Fig. 3 Example 1 of 20 source data sheets

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18 T R MOSS AND J E STRUTT

quite different since the majority of sources will reflect Table 4 Environmental stress factors ( k , )
experience from plant operating in significantly different General environmental conditions k.
conditions. The sample sizes will frequently be small
and there may be substantial differences in the design of Ideal, static conditions 0.1
Vibration-free, controlled environment 0.5
the equipment, the size, duty, etc., and in the operating Average industrial condition 1.o
and environmental conditions. Such divergent source Chemical plant 1.5
data clearly cannot be combined as a single homoge- Offshore platforms/ships 2.0
neous sample. It would also exclude failure rate esti- Road transport 3.0
Rail transport 4.0
mates from sources where details of the sample Air transport (take-ofl) 1LO.0
populations, numbers of failures, surveillance period,
etc., are not recorded in the data source document.
Because the sources of mechanical reliability data are Table 5 Rating stress factors ( k 2 )
relatively few, this could seriously diminish the generic
Component nominal rating
data available to the reliability assessor.
Combining reliability data from a number of different Yo k,
sources has been studied by several different organiz- 140 4.0
ations, for example in the Offshore Reliability Data 120 2.0
100 1.o
(OREDA) Project (3). Moss, in a study of process 80 0.6
control equipment reliability, also found that sample 60 0.3
failure rates for many equipment classes in a variety of 40 0.2
applications were generally log-normally distributed (4). 20 0.1
For most types of equipment over 60 per cent of sample Note: for equipment designed aganst a specific
failure rates were within a factor of 2 and over 90 per design code (for example vessels) rating = 100%;
for other equipment (for example pumps, valves,
cent within a factor of 4 of the median failure rate. etc.) rating = 80% or less may be appropriate.
As a first approximation, therefore, it may be
assumed that a best-estimate of the mean failure rate for
average industrial conditions will be the median of a set From the foregoing a more robust estimate of the
of sample failure rates since 50 per cent are less than failure rate for the fire water system control valve given
and 50 per cent more than this value. The range of in Section 3 can be derived based on the additional
sample failure rates also defines the uncertainty associ- information given in Table 6.
ated with the estimate due to the effect of different oper-
ating and environmental conditions and the functional Table 6 Application details
and engineering characteristics of the equipment. This Equipment Control valve, normally closed
can be useful information to support the sensitivity Function Open on demand
analysis. TYPe Pneumatically actuated, gate valve, 2 in diameter
The base failure rate will, however, need adjusting Operating duty River water, 100 Ib/in2, ambient temperature
Environment Chemical plant
for the specific application being assessed and the Failure mode Fail-closed (FC)
equipment failure modes which can cause failure of the
system. Models for adjusting equipment failure rates are
generally of the form Consider first the data available from the source
documents listed in Table 2. It can be seen that 13 of
AXA = nn

i= 1
ki dA)
where A, is the predicted failure rate for equipment X
in failure mode A, 1, is the base failure rate for
equipment types similar to X, ki is the stress factor for
stress i and p(A) is the proportion of failures in failure
mode A. Here ll is the multiplication operator. The
importance of applying a factor p(A) for the proportion
of equipment failures that can cause failure of the
system cannot be overemphasized. Without this factor
the estimate of I,,is likely to be unduly pessimistic.
For global data such as those available from the data
sources featured here a simplified model is usually
employed
where k , is the stress factor for the environment and k ,
is the stress factor for equipment duty. Tables 4 and 5
show recommended stress factors for environment and
duty respectively. The proportion of failures in the rele-
vant failure mode p(A) may be derived from the source
data or alternatively may be estimated from engineering
experience.
Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering
the data sources feature static equipment in an indus-
trial environment and closer inspection of the data
sheets shows that all of these sources contain some
information on valves. From the data tabulated in the
source documents five sources specifically quote failure
rates for control valves-some of the data sources also
give details of the valve size, operating medium, valve
type, method of actuation and the principal failure
modes. However, the extent of the information from the
different sources varies widely, in some cases (source 8)
just an overall failure rate is given, in others (source 9)
the data includes details of the valve size, type, oper-
ating environment, sample size, number of failures, etc.
After careful review of the source documents five
samples were selected for deriving a best-estimate of the
base failure rate for this application. The overall failure
rate estimates from these five sources ordered by magni-
tude are 2.4, 10, 18.7, 30 and 45 failures/million h. The
median failure rate of 18.7 failures/million h is therefore
a best-estimate of 1, for average industrial conditions.
The stress factors for environment and duty can be
obtained from Tables 4 and 5. This chemical plant can
be assumed to be typical of chemical plants generally;
hence the environmental stress factor k , = 1.5 for this
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 DATA SOURCES FOR RELIABILITY DESIGN ANALYSIS
Table 7 Control valve-DroDortion of failures in fail-closed mode
Assumed failure modes Percentage
(engineering judgement)
Leakage 50%
Actuator failures 30%
Seize 10%
Others 10%
application. The duty specified for this control valve
does not appear to be particularly onerous and engin-
eering judgement suggests a duty stress factor k, = 0.6;
this assumes that the operating conditions are signifi-
cantly lower than the valve design specification as far as
operating pressure and temperature are concerned.
The proportion of failures in the different failure
modes given previously can be accepted as representa-
tive after comparison with the information from the five
source documents selected for use with this study. It is
now necessary to estimate the proportion that could
contribute to system failure-in this case control valve
fails closed. Table 7 shows how this can be estimated.
Thus for this fire water system control valve best-
estimates are as follows:
Base failure rate (failures/million h) & = 18.7
Stress factor k , = 1.5
Duty stress factor k, = 0.6
Proportion in fail-closed mode p(FC) = 0.45
Hence
= I b k l k , X p(FC)
= 18.7 x 1.5 x 0.6 x 0.45 = 7.6 failures/million h
This is significantly lower than the estimate obtained in
Section 3 based on only one data source. Failure rate
estimates based on limited information generally tend
to be pessimistic. The benefit of using several sources
should always produce more realistic figures and an
indication of the uncertainty in the estimate. However,
some of the source documents discussed here are quite
specific to one industry and are based on extensive data
collection and analysis exercises. One such example is
source 15, the Offshore reliability data handbook. In
these cases the data source may be sufficient in itself,
although other data sources could be useful for com-
ponents not covered in the handbook and for compari-
son.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Quantitative reliability assessment of mechanical
systems is frequently inhibited by the lack of representa-
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19
Effect of Estimated proportion
failure in fail-closed mode
No effect 0%
Will not open 30%
Will not open 10%
Assume half in fail-closed mode 5 Yo
-
Total 45%
tive failure and repair statistics. Those listed here are
considered to be the most comprehensive sources avail-
able from the public domain.
Consideration is currently being given by the Mecha-
nical Reliability Committee to the preparation of a
handbook of reliability data for the process industries.
The handbook will be based on the data sources listed
in Table 1, in-house reliability data from companies in
the process industries, existing reliability studies of
process equipment and expert judgement. These data
will be combined to generate best-estimates of failure
rates, failure modes, failure on demand probabilities
and repair times for a wide range of mechanical
equipment. The authors would welcome contributions
from engineers with access to alternative sources of
process equipment reliability information.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The data source sheets discussed in this paper were pre-
pared by the Mechanical Reliability Committee Data
Acquisition Working Party with the following member-
ship :
Dr J. E. Strutt, Chairman, Cranfield Institute of Tech-
nology
E. A. Boxall, Nuclear Electric
D. Thompson, BP International Limited
Dr D. W. Heckle, ICI Limited
P. Stead, BEQE Limited
L. Dunbar, RM Consultants Limited
B. J. Hanks, British Gas Corporation
REFERENCES
1 Davidson, J. and Hunsley, C. The reliability of mechanical systems,
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2 A guide to hazard and operability studies, 1979 (Chemical Industries
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3 Oflshore reliability data (OREDA) handbook (OREDA 84), 1984
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4 MOSS, T. R. The reliability characteristics of process control
equipment. MPhil thesis, University of Bradford, 1981.
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