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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Unavailability analysis of redundant safety systems

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6597479

Analytical equations have been obtained for the unavailabilities of redundant standby safety systems with components tested periodically. Test and repair contributions, hardware failures, human testing and repair errors as well as failures due to true demands have been taken into account. Equations have been derived for m-out-of-n systems (1 less than or equal to m less than or equal to n less than or equal to 4) with uniformly staggered, consecutive and random testing schemes. The equations have been used in a computer code, ICARUS, and applied to practical safety systems. The results are useful for optimizing the redundancy and testing and they illustrate the importance of human/testing errors and falures associated with true demands.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Lab., IL (USA); Lowell Univ., MA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-31109-ENG-38
OSTI ID:
6597479
Report Number(s):
CONF-8004145-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English