In recent years, various large- and medium-sized shopping malls have been essential components of each city with the speed-up of China’s urbanization process and the improvement of residents’ living standard. A method for evaluating fire risk in shopping malls based on quantified safety checklist and structure entropy weight method was proposed according to related literatures as well as laws and regulations

Suppose that a system is subject to a sequence of shocks which occur with probability p in any period of time t=1,2,…, and suppose that δ1 and δ2 are two critical levels (1≤δ1<δ2). The system fails when the time interval between two consecutive shocks is less than δ1, and the time interval bigger than δ2 has no effect on the system activity. In addition, the system fails with a probability of, say

Current Human Reliability Analysis models express error probabilities as a function of task types and operational context, without explicitly modelling the influence of different crew behavioral characteristics on the error probability. The influence of such variability is treated only implicitly, by variability and uncertainty distributions with bounds primarily obtained by expert judgment. This paper

The secondary dust explosion ignited by the primary explosion energy often causes greater damage to the just destroyed carrier. Therefore, the study of explosion risk as well as the risk reduction effect with suppression is key guard against the secondary and derivative explosions. A novel risk assessment methodology is presented based on Monte Carlo theory for numerically fitting pressure’s uncertainty

To study the influence of random parameter on the reliability of the vehicle front stabilizer bar, the fatigue strength is analyzed according to the random fatigue strength prediction method, then the fatigue limit of the actual parts are estimated, a new fatigue failure model is improved by using the fatigue limit Se of actual parts. Through this model, the stress spectrum collected by real vehicle

Mooring systems that are used to secure position keeping of floating offshore oil and gas facilities are subject to deterioration processes, such as pitting corrosion and fatigue crack growth. Past investigations show that pitting corrosion has a significant effect on reducing the fatigue resistance of mooring chain links. In situ inspections are essential to monitor the development of the corrosion

With the shift of business pattern from the traditional manufacturer orientation to customer orientation, the product-service system has become more and more popular. This paper takes an electrical vehicle charging station as the research object and builds a joint optimization model of reliability design and spares inventory with the objective of maximizing net profit under the constraints of availability

In survival analysis, more than one factor typically contributes to individual failure. In addition, censoring is inevitable in lifespan tests or reliability studies due to external causes or experimental purposes. In this article, the competing risks model is considered and investigated under progressively Type-II censoring where data is from Lomax distributions. Assumptions are further made that

We analyze vibration signals from wind turbines with dictionary learning and investigate the relation between dictionary distances and faults occurring in a wind turbine output shaft rolling element bearing and gearbox under different data and compute constraints. Dictionary learning is an unsupervised machine learning method for signal processing, which permits learning a set of signal-specific features

When the level of degradation of a deteriorating system is observed at inspection, a decision can be made either to perform its preventive maintenance (PM) immediately or to postpone it. This type of policy can increase the expected lifetime of a system if executed in an optimal way. The main distinction from the previous works is that for optimal decision, we utilise the information on degradation

Dynamic fault tree (DFT) is a powerful modeling approach for reliability analysis of complex system with dynamic failure behaviors. In reality, the tree structure may be highly coupled either by shared basic events or by the high-level dynamic gates. Currently, the application of sequential binary decision diagram (SBDD)-based method for quantitative analysis of such highly coupled DFTs is mainly limited

Remaining useful life (RUL) prediction in real operating environment (ROE) plays an important role in condition-based maintenance. However, the life information in ROE is limited, especially for some long-life products. In such cases, accelerated degradation test (ADT) is an effective method to collect data and then the accelerated degradation data are converted to normal level of accelerated stresses

Bridges are one of the most important assets of transportation networks. A closure of a bridge can increase the vulnerability of the geographic area served by such networks, as it reduces the number of available routes. Condition monitoring and deterioration detection methods can be used to monitor the health state of a bridge and enable detection of early signs of deterioration. In this paper, a novel

The existence of the failure transitivity of machine tool components makes the fault transfer probability of components demonstrate dynamic time-variability, which affects the importance of components and further affects the machine maintenance cycle. Therefore, studying fault transfer probability and the importance of machine tool components is necessary. In this article, the fault transfer probability

Due to that the operating environment is becoming more and more complex and rigorous, the multiple competing failure modes for the reliability system is much commonly seen. In order to improve the system performance, a sensor-based degradation calibration policy (SBDC policy) is presented in this paper. The model considers the competing failure process which is described by the soft and hard failure

The input variable of engineering structure inevitable has certain uncertainty. How to quantify the influence of those uncertainties on the uncertainty of structural response is an important issue in structural design. Non-probabilistic reliability importance analysis is one of the methods to quantify this influence when variable data information is insufficient. Although the method has great advantages

Transmission pipelines comprise a major part of a gas network, conveying natural gas within jurisdictions, and across international boundaries. In the United States, more than 10,000 failure incidents have been reported in gas transmission pipelines in a 20-year period from 1996 to 2016 leading to a cumulative property damage of more than $748 million. Among different failure sources, corrosion is

Due to its capital-intensive nature, the Oil and Gas industry requires high operational standards to meet safety and environmental requirements, while maintaining economical returns. In this context, maintenance policies play a crucial role in the avoidance of unplanned downtimes and enhancement of productivity. In particular, Condition-Based Maintenance is an approach in which maintenance actions

Knowing the ability of networked infrastructure to maintain operability following a spatially distributed hazard (e.g. an earthquake or a hurricane) is paramount to managing risk and planning for recovery. Leveraging topological properties of the network, along with characteristics of the hazard field, may be an expedient way of predicting network robustness compared to more computationally-intensive

In this paper, a new reliability method for load-sharing parallel systems with dependent components that share the workload equally before and after some components have failed is studied. In the working process of a load-sharing parallel system, after the failure of some components, the surviving components share the original system workload with higher components loads. The states of all the components

Wheel polygonization is an important failure mode for high-speed trains and causes huge maintenance costs, however, the studies on its reliability and risk are rare. First, failure effects analysis via dynamical simulations and tests indicates that high-order polygonization induces large wheel-rail forces and vehicle vibrations, which is quite detrimental to reliability and safety. Then, correlation

At the request of the Journal Editor and SAGE Publishing, the following article has been retracted.

This paper focuses on the reliability analysis of k-out-of-n systems which are designed to perform a given mission consisting of several distinct phases. As the phases of the mission change, the reliability characteristics of the system and the system structure vary accordingly. The phase transition probabilities, phase durations, and component failure rates are dependent on the number of operating

Estimating the all-terminal network reliability by using artificial neural networks (ANNs) has emerged as a promissory alternative to classical exact NP-hard algorithms. Approaches based on traditional ANNs have usually considered the network reliability upper bound as part of the inputs, which implies additional time-consuming calculations during both training and testing phases. This paper proposes

Existing research about the maintenance optimisation of production systems with intermediate buffers largely assumed a series system structure. However, practical production systems often contain subsystems of ring structures, for example, rework and feedforward. The maintenance optimisation of these complex systems is difficult due to the complicated structure of maintenance policies and the large

In this paper, we present an integrated framework for quantifying epistemic uncertainty in probabilistic risk assessment. Three types of epistemic uncertainty, that is, completeness, structural and parametric uncertainties, are considered. A maturity model is developed to evaluate the management of these epistemic uncertainties in the model building process. The impact of epistemic uncertainty on the

On the basis of the classical two degree of freedom (2-DOF) rotor-bearing system, the stochastic dynamic equations are solved and the dynamic reliability of the rotor’s positioning precision is examined in this paper. Firstly, the stochastic dynamic equations are converted to several deterministic dynamic equations by orthogonal polynomial approximation method. The contact uncertainty coefficient is

Both the high-speed railway and air transportation network are the backbone of the interregional transport network and cover important cities in a country. Taking cities as nodes, a comprehensive interregional transportation network consisting of high-speed railways and civil aviation can be constructed. This network undertakes a huge passenger transportation task, so the failure of this network will

Computer vision algorithms are powerful techniques that can be used for remotely monitoring and inspecting civil structures. Detecting and segmenting cracks in images of concrete bridges can provide useful information related to the health of the structure. There are several states of the art methods based on Deep Learning that have been used for segmentation tasks. However, most of them require a

The fault features of gearbox are often influenced and interwoven with each other under the non-stationary condition. The traditional shallow intelligent diagnosis models are difficult to detect and identify gearbox faults with selected features according to prior knowledge. To solve this problem, a novel deep convolutional auto-encoding neural network is designed based on the fusion of the convolutional

For most existing fault diagnosis methods, feature extraction is always based on a complex artificial design and the complete feature extraction from an original signal. With the gradual complication of modern industrial machinery and equipment, it has become more difficult for traditional feature extractors to achieve the desired results. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have been developed

This paper introduces a condition-based maintenance method combined with long short-term memory network for offshore wind turbine. According to the ranking of offshore wind turbine components using multiple indicators (failure rate, repair time, and maintenance cost), the optimization object focuses on four critical components, namely, rotor, pitch system, gearbox, and generator. Long short-term memory

The performance evaluation of a system having n identical units, each of which consists of two components has been successfully discussed in binary-state reliability analysis. In this paper, we study the performance evaluation of a multi-state system based on bivariate order statistics. The multi-state system consists of n independent and identical units, each having two components. The components

To find the best mode for system design in reliability optimization, risk engineers around the world use the importance measure as a basic tool. This paper introduces a new importance measure taking into account minimal path sets of the system. It helps to optimize the system designs that occur in many situations. For instance, this importance measure can be used (a) in identifying important components

The applications of networks can be observed in numerous engineering realms mainly computers and communication, transportation, electric transmission and oil and gas distribution. Estimating the reliability of such networks is a critical task for the well-being of society as well as a nation. The paradigm of network reliability has evolved considerably over the past few decades. The purpose of this

Hasofer-Lind and Rackwtiz-Fiessler (HLRF) method is an efficient iterative algorithm for locating the most probable failure point and calculating the first order reliability index in structural reliability analysis. However, this method may encounter numerical instability problems for high nonlinear limit state function (LSF). In this paper, an improved HLRF-based first order reliability method is

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of bearings in high-speed rail have attracted considerable attention in recent years, however, it’s still a hard work due to harsh environments with high speeds and high loads. A statistical condition monitoring and fault diagnosis method based on tunable Q-factor wavelet transform (TQWT) is developed in this study. The core idea of this method is that the TQWT

The redundancy allocation problem (RAP) of non-repairable series-parallel systems considering cold standby components and imperfect switching mechanism has been traditionally formulated with the objective of maximizing a lower bound on system reliability instead of exact system reliability. This objective function has been considered due to the difficulty of determining a closed-form expression for

This article presents a new risk model for estimating the probability of allision risk (the impact between a ship under way and a stationary installation) from passing vessels on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Offshore petroleum operators on the NCS are required by the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) to perform risk assessments to estimate the probability of impacts between ships

This paper considers dynamic systems widely used in industry for which the behavior can be approximated to a second order differential equation. The components of such a system suffer from random faults and failures due to wear, age or usage. These events impact the dynamic behavior which is interpreted as a modification of the initial differential equation with random coefficients. At given times

Maintenance activities often require an identical preparatory work. Therefore, a joint execution of such maintenance activities may save a substantial cost. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing the total maintenance cost of a multi-component repairable system by grouping of components and carrying out maintenance activities on group(s) of components of a complex system. More specifically

Motivated by real-world complex engineering systems, this research proposes a multi-state system with two levels of performance sharing. In this system, there exists a unique performance transmitter between any two adjacent subsystems and any two adjacent elements within each subsystem. Surplus performance of a subsystem or an element can only be transmitted to its adjacent subsystems or elements.

Subsea Autonomous High Integrity Pressure Protection System is used in the subsea production process to lower the pressure level of downstream equipment and pipelines and to protect low-pressure pipelines and equipment. Once failure occurs, it will cause serious environmental damage and huge economic losses. In this article, a method of Dynamic Bayesian networks is proposed based on different failure

Many real-world engineering systems such as aerospace systems, intelligent transportation systems and high-performance computing systems are designed to complete missions in multiple phases. These types of systems are known as phased-mission systems. Inspired by an industrial heating system, this research proposes a generalized linear sliding window system with phased missions. The proposed system

The reliability of machinery and automated guided vehicle has been one of the most important challenges to enhance production efficiency in several manufacturing systems. Reliability improvement would result in a simultaneous reduction of both production times and transportation costs of the materials, especially in automated guided vehicles. This article aims to conduct a practical multi-objective

Industrial components and systems typically operate in an evolving environment characterized by modifications of the working conditions. Methods for diagnosing faults in components and systems must, therefore, be capable of adapting to the changings in the environment of operation. In this work, we propose a novel fault diagnostic method based on the compacted object sample extraction algorithm for

Comprehensive and detailed investigations of various major offshore accidents have shown that multifarious risk influencing factors including technical, human, and organizational factors have a significant impact on the nonlinear accident sequences. Parallel efforts are being made to develop quantitative risk analysis models involving risk influencing factors. It is recognized that in order to keep

Characteristics of earthquake strong ground motions play an important role in the calculation of seismic-induced risk imposed on the structures. Distinguished features exist in movements recorded near seismic sources, as a result of a substantial amount of energy in a short period of record arrival time. In this article, seismic risk analysis of concrete moment-resisting frames due to near-fault strong

This article deals with the estimation of parameters for the load-sharing parallel system when the underlying distribution of component lifetime is exponential Pareto. The appropriate iterative method is used to get the parameter estimators. And the asymptotic distribution of the proposed maximum likelihood estimator is presented. For the model simplified, the maximum likelihood and best asymptotic

The traffic load has grown significantly in recent years, which might be a threat for the service safety of existing bridges. Thus, it is an urgent task to assess the actual traffic load effects on bridges, considering actual heavy traffic load instead of design traffic load. This study presents a framework for extrapolating maximum dynamic traffic load effects on large bridges using site-specific

System-theoretic process analysis is a hazard identification method whose main assumption is that accidents can be caused by unsafe interactions of system components, as well as component failures. System-theoretic process analysis can cover a wider range of hazards compared with traditional hazard analysis methods, such as software flaws, human errors, component failures, and complex interactions

Sensing technologies have been used to gather massive amounts of data to improve system reliability analysis with the use of deep learning. Their use has been mainly focused on specific components or for the whole system, resulting in a drawback when dealing with complex systems as the interactions among components are not explicitly taken into account. Here, we propose a system-level prognostics and

Bearings are the core components in various kinds of rotating machineries. With the increasing demand of reliable bearings in precision equipment, it is of great significance to analyze the motion error of bearings. In this article, a nonlinear dynamic model of angular contact ball bearings installed in pairs is constructed to describe its response characteristics. The definition of a failure mode

Risk assessment provides information to support decision-making. Then, the confidence that can be put in its outcomes is fundamental, and this depends on the accuracy, representativeness and completeness of the models used in the risk assessment. A quantitative measure is needed to assess the credibility and trustworthiness of the outcomes obtained from such models, for decision-making purposes. This

For uncertainty analysis of high-dimensional complex engineering problems, this article proposes a hybrid multiplicative dimension reduction method based on the existent multiplicative dimension reduction method. It uses the multiplicative dimension reduction method to approximate the original high-dimensional performance function which is sufficiently smooth and has a small high-order derivative as

Theorem specifying how all minimal cut (path) vectors to level j can be obtained from all minimal path (cut) vectors to level j in any multistate monotone system is proven. Characterizations of binary type multistate monotone systems and binary type multistate strongly coherent systems by minimal cut and path vectors and corresponding to them, binary type cut and path sets are also demonstrated.

Polygonal wear is one of the most critical failure modes of high-speed train wheels that would significantly compromise the safety and reliability of high-speed train operation. However, the mechanism underpinning wheel polygon is complex and still not fully understood, which makes it challenging to track its evolution of the polygonal wheel. The large amount of data gathered through regular inspection

In this article, a hybrid system that consists of a specified number of wind turbines and solar modules is considered. In particular, the system is modeled using weighted k-out-of-n system which is also known as a threshold system in reliability literature. The system under concern consists of n1 identical wind turbines and n2 identical solar modules, and each turbine and module can be in one of two

Time-variant reliability problems commonly occur in practical engineering due to the deterioration in material properties, external disturbance and other uncertain factors. Considering the non-probabilistic method can effectively deal with the uncertainties in reliability analysis. Based on the stress–strength interference method and interval method, a time-variant stress–strength interference interval

Renewal-geometric process is used to describe such a non-homogeneous deteriorating process that a system will deteriorate after several consecutive repairs, not after each repair described by the geometric process. In the maintenance domain, the effect of corrective maintenance after failure is generally not repairable as new (e.g. geometrically deteriorating). Preventive maintenance is critical before