A Dynamic Decisional Approach for the Reliability Analysis: Methodology and Application to the Steam System in a Thermal Power Plant

Probabilistic Safety Assessment is a systematic process of examining how engineered systems work to ensure safety. With the growth of the size of dynamic systems and the complexity of the interactions between hardware, software and humans, it becomes difficult to treat the risky scenarios by the traditional methods. A dynamic probabilistic risk assessment approach is proposed in this dissertation based on IDDA (Integrated Dynamic Decision Analysis), a tool for developing Dynamic Decision Event Trees. In IDDA binary explosion is held back and decisions are taken on the basis of the whole risk distribution, but we have to renounce a graphical representation. After a short introduction to Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Dynamic Reliability, a description of the IDDA method is given, providing some explanatory examples. Furthermore, a reliability analysis for the vapour cycle system within a combined thermal power plant is done. Most critical factors have been revealed and appropriate improvements are proposed. This book might be especially useful to anyone interested in Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Dynamic Reliability.