Performance modeling of the serial processes in refining system of a sugar plant using RAMD analysis

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to present a method to identify the critical component of the system. As traditionally, any one parameter among availability, reliability and maintainability parameters is computed to identify the critical component and its effect on performance of the system. In this paper, reliability, availability, maintainability and dependability (RAMD) parameters or indices are computed to identify the critical component of the system. Mathematical modeling of the system based on Markov birth–death process is carried out to derive Chapman–Kolmogorov differential equations. These equations are further solved and RAMD parameters are computed with mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR) and dependability ratio parameters for each component of the system. Sensitivity analysis has been conducted for finding the most critical component of the system by varying the failure and repair rates of each subsystem of the system. To show the application of the proposed method, a case of the refining system, a repairable industrial system of sugar plant has been taken for evaluating RAMD indices of the system.