MECHANICAL SYSTEM SURVEILLANCE TEST INTERVAL OPTIMIZATION

In general, functional tests are required periodically to detect failu res in standby equipment as a means of assuring their availability on demand. However, these functional tests may have an adverse impact on the system availability, because of their potential negative effects s uch as unavailability at the period of testing, increase of failure ra te resulting from excessive wear due to testing. Therefore, in princip le, there is an optimal test interval for each standby system. As it n ormally is difficult to determine analytically the optimal test interv al for the real systems in the industry, we therefore introduce the Mo nte Carlo simulation method for this purpose. In this paper, a one-com ponent system was chosen firstly to introduce the concept of test inte rval optimization as well as the feasibility of using Monte Carlo simu lation. Secondly, a real system in the nuclear power plant, Standby-li quid-control system, was studied using Monte Carlo simulation techniqu e. The promising results obtained confirm the concept and methodology used.