Reliability of equipment in time-varying processes

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Many industrial processes operate in time-varying conditions. Examples are manufacturing cells, robot manipulator motions, CANDU reactor refuelling, mining excavation, and pumping rate changes and valve actuation in mineral processing operations. Transient conditions make equipment condition monitoring and diagnostics difficult; and this variability poses a particular challenge in achieving reliable process performance in complex, integrated plants for extended periods of time. Such plants can have high opportunity costs of lost production associated with equipment faults, process interferences, and maintenance outages, particularly when there is limited inventory or redundancy. Integrated industrial processes will have to rely increasingly on information to maintain process robustness with reduced energy intensity and less intermediate surge capacity, by using process control as well as on-line assessments of system reliability and fault classification for production and maintenance decision-making. For systems that have multiple operating modes and variable operating conditions, there is no general framework for assessing and controlling equipment reliability as a function of process operation.