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Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332

12th GLOBAL CONGRESS ON MANUFACTURING AND MANAGEMENT, GCMM 2014

Reliability Analysis of CHU system of Coal Fired Thermal Power


Plant Using Fuzzy - Approach
Dilbagh Panchal a*, Dinesh Kumar b
a
Research scholar, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India-247667
b
Prof., Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India-247667

Abstract

The aim of this research work is to study the behaviour of the CHU (compressor house unit) of a medium size coal fired thermal
power plant using fuzzy - approach (quantitative approach). The system has been modelled using PN and various reliability
indices viz. failure rate, repair time, MTBF, ENOF, Availability and reliability are computed at different spread/uncertainty level.
The results are helpful to the system analyst to analyse the behaviour of the system and to plan suitable maintenance policy for
improving the system availability.

2014
2014TheTheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published Ltd. This
by Elsevier is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014

Keywords: Fuzzy methodology (FM); fuzzy - approach; Petri net (PN); Mean time between failure (MTBF)

1. Introduction
The goal of maximum generation and long run availability of the system may be obtained by making the system
failure free which is an inescapable phenomenon in an industrial system. Thus to achieve high availability of the
system it is necessary for the system analyst to emphasis on purging of sudden failure which results in heavy
generation loss .CHU (compressor house unit) of the coal fired thermal power plant is a complex repairable
industrial system where it is necessary to analyse the system behaviour for maintaining its high availability. From
the survey it has been noted that lot of research has been done by different researcher in the direction of behaviour
analysis of various units of different process industries (running 247 hrs) using probabilistic approach. Arora and
Kumar [1] dealt with the availability and MTBF and discuss the availability analysis of steam and power generating
system in the thermal power plant using Markov birth death approach. Arora and Kumar [2] again presented the use
of the Markov approach for the stochastic behaviour analysis and maintenance planning of the ash handling system
_________________

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +919639965310.


E-mail address: panchaldilbagh@gmail.com

1877-7058 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.12.330
2324 Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332

of a thermal power plant. The probabilistic approach so applied is inadequate to address the uncertain and vague
failure/repair data. Thus to handle such uncertainty in the failure/repair data FM has been used by the various
researchers in different field. Knezevic and Odoom [3] dealt with the reliability of the repairable system in which
fuzzy methodology and fuzzy lambda tau technique is used for calculating the various reliability indices. Sharma et
al. [4] presented the use of FM for the behaviour prediction of forming unit of the paper mill. Presently FM has been
applied successfully in following field like Structural reliability [5-6]; Safety and risk engineering [7]; Fault
diagnosis [8-9]; Software reliability [10]; Human reliability [11]. Thus from literature survey it is observed that FM
has not been applied in the CHU unit of the thermal power plant industry. Thus an attempt has been made by the
author to apply the FM for the reliability analysis of the considered system.

2. FTA and PN theory


FTA is a powerful approach for the reliability analysis of a complex system / subsystem and to obtain the reliability
information it is in use since 1960.Further it is used to analyze the associated failure probability of various events
and their effect on the system performance. As fault tree model consist of large number of AND / OR gates and
basic events thus it is tedious to obtain minimal cut set and path set where as in Petri net model path set and minimal
cut set can be derived easily. Thus C.A Petri proposed PN [12] approach using diagraph similar to FTA, to describe
cause and effect relationship between condition and events. It mainly consists of two node viz. Place "P" and
Transition "T" [13].Mathematically Petri net is defined by 5-tuple. Where are
the sets of Place, Transition, Arc, Weight function and initial marking of the system. Classical Petri net is used for
the investigation of qualitative or logical properties of the system where as for the Quantitative performance analysis
time concept is needed to consider in PN definition. For more information one can refer to [14]. The basic symbols
used in PN are:

Circle representing the place

Bar representing the transition

Arc, between place and transition

Token drawn as dot

In the present study static part of the PN has been used to analyze the system behaviour (with assumptions that the
transitions are not timed). The PN model corresponding to logical OR / AND gate is shown in fig1.

T1 T1

T2 T3 T4 T2 T3 T4

(a) (b)

Fig 1: PN model (a) OR gate (b) AND gate

3. Fuzzy set theory


The basic concepts of fuzzy set theory used in the present study are defined as: [15-19]
3.1 Crisp versus fuzzy set: A crisp set or classical set contains an object that satisfies the precise property of the
Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332 2325

MF (membership function) and defined as:


 
 (1)

On the other hand a fuzzy set contain the object that satisfy the imprecise property of MF (membership function).
Mathematically a fuzzy set can be defined as:
(2)
Where U: universe of discourse, : element of U, : crisp set, : Characteristic function/indicator function
and : degree of membership for element in fuzzy set.
3.2 Triangular membership function: It is a triangular membership function (TMF) if Membership function
in universe is given as
of a fuzzy set 



 (3)


Where represent the upper, mean and lower bound respectively. Mean bound also gives maximum score of
.With the introduction of alpha cut the membership function is defined as:

 (4)

The Confidence interval defined by -cut is represented as in fig 2.

 !


    

Figure: 2 - cut of a fuzzy set


(5)
The basic arithmetic operation like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division etc. used for calculating the
fuzzy expression are extended through the use of extension principle [16-17]
4. Methodology
Fuzzy - methodology is used to compute the various reliability parameters of the considered system. The
procedural steps involved in this approach are shown in fig 3.
2326 Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332

Expert knowledge
Historical records and reliability database
Log book record
System /reliability analyst

I R
N E
F L
O I
R A
M B
A Fuzzy input Defuzzified values I
T L
I Fault tree and I
O Fuzzifier Petrinet model Defuzzifier T
N Y
Crisp input I
E
X N
Fuzzy output D
T
R I
A Construct fuzzy
C
Obtain reliability I
C indices function in reliability indices MF
T using arithmetic E
the form of and
I operation S
O
N

System behaviour analysis


x Fuzzy
x Crisp
x Defuzzified

Fig 3: Procedural steps of fuzzy - approach


5. Case study
A medium size coal fired thermal power plant located in the northern part of India with an installed capacity of
1368 MW has been considered which consist of various functionary subsystem such as coal handling plant, coal
crushing unit, water treatment plant, steam generating unit, power generating unit, compressor house unit, ash
handling unit etc. Compressor house unit one of the important functionary unit of thermal power plant is the subject
of our discussion and consists of compressed air system, air storage tank, air dryer system and cleaner. The
atmospheric air enters into the compressed air system where it is compressed. The compressed air stored into the air
tank and then it will pass through the air dryer and heater where its moisture is removed. The dry air after passing
through the cleaner is supplied to different sub-system of the plant for their proper valve functioning. The Schematic
diagram of compressor unit is shown in fig.4.The system consists of following four main subsystem.
(1) Compressed air system [CS1]: It is used to generate low pressure and high pressure compressed air and consists
of low pressure side (LPS) compressor, intercooler and high pressure side (HPS) compressor arranged in series
configuration.
(2) Air storage tank [AS2]: It is used to store the compressed air for further use.
(3) Air dryer system [AD3]: It is used to remove the moisture from the compressed air and consists of air dryer and
heater in series configuration.
(4) Air cleaner [AC4]: Used to clean the dry air and make it for further use.
Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332 2327

Compressed air system

Intercooler

Atmospheric Low pressure High pressure Air tank


air suction side side

Air dryer
Moisture remover system

Cleaner Heater

To the various sub-system of the


thermal power plant

Figure 4: Schematic flow diagram of compressor house unit


6. Reliability analysis
For the reliability analysis of the considered system, first PN model is developed from its equivalent fault tree
diagram shown in 5(a) and 5(b) which shows components configuration in series /parallel combination with OR
/AND gate.
FT and PN model for CHU system

(a) (b)
Fig 5: (a) Fault tree model (b) Petrinet model
2328 Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332

Step1.Information collection phase: Failure/repair data related to each component of the system is collected from
the CHU maintenance log book and verified with the maintenance field/ maintenance manager expert given in
table1.
Table 1.Failure/repair data for CHU
Component Failure rate (i) Repair time (i)
(Failures/hr) (hrs)
High pressure side (HPS), Low pressure side 40
(LPS)
Intercooler 15
Air tank 10


Air dryer, Heater 12
Cleaner 12

Step2.Computation phase: Failure/repair data collected from the various sources with ambiguity /vagueness are
translated into triangular fuzzy numbers using TFN membership, with 15% spread on the crisp input value (fig. 6
for HPS of the considered system).The - expression for conventional AND/OR expression is given in table
2 and OR /AND gate transition expression are represented by equation 6, 7 and 8.

 !  !

  40

Fig 6: input fuzzy triangular number representation

Table 2: Basic Expression for AND/OR gate [20]


gate    


n-Input gate

  
expression

AND gate transition expression



Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332 2329

(6)




 (7)


OR gate transition expression



(8)

Step3. Estimation of reliability parameters: Using expression as given in table 3 various reliability parameters
viz. Failure rate, repair time, MTBF, MTTR, ENOF, availability and reliability are computed with right and left
spread at different alpha cut/membership grades (the range lies within 0-1, with an increment of 0.1) and shown by
graphs in fig 7(a,d) for 15% uncertainty.
Table 3: Various reliability parameter
Reliability indices Expression


Mean time to failure


Mean time to repair

Mean time between failure
Availability


Reliability

Expected number of failures

1 1
0.9 L.S 0.9 L.S
Degree of Membership
Degree of Membership

0.8 0.8 R.S


0.7 R.S
0.7
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
0.0008 0.0009 0.0010 0.0011 0.0012 7 12 17 22 27 32 37
Failure Rate Repair Time
(a)
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1 1
0.9 0.9 L.S
0.8 0.8

Degree of Membership
L.S R.S
Degree of Membership

0.7 R.S 0.7


0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.99 1 0.007 0.014 0.021 0.028 0.035 0.042 0.049
Availability Unavailability
(b)
1 1
0.9 L.S 0.9 L.S
Degree of membership

Degree of Membership
0.8 0.8 R.S
0.7 R.S
0.7
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
0.8000 0.8200 0.8400 0.8600 0.13000 0.15000 0.17000 0.19000
Reliability Unreliability
(c)

1 1
0.9 L.S 0.9 L.S
Degree of Membership

Degree of membership

0.8 0.8 R.S


R.S
0.7 0.7
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
800 900 1000 1100 1200 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2
MTBF ENOF
(d)
Fig 7(a,d). Fuzzy representation for reliability parameters at 15% spread
Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332 2331

Step4.Defuzzification: In order to make the maintenance decision with maintenance action defuzzifiaction is done
to convert the fuzzy output into crisp value using centre of area (COA) method. Further to quantify the system
behaviour more pragmatically the Defuzzified value for various reliability parameter are calculated at different
spreads( 15%, 25% and 60%) and is given in table 4. The % change in reliability parameters is given in table 5.
Table 4: Crisp and defuzzified value

System Crisp value Defuzzified Defuzzified Defuzzified


parameters value(15% spread) value(25% spread) value(60% spread)
Failure rate (h-1) 0.0010376 0.0010377 0.0010378 0.0010379
Repair time (h) 17.675788 20.651846 26.752222 138.06675
Availability 0.9819909 0.9779818 0.9705632 0.9271427
Unavailability 0.0180091 0.0220182 0.0294368 0.0728577
Reliability 0.8400307 0.8402221 0.8405626 0.8430966
Unreliability 0.1599692 0.1597778 0.1594374 0.1569034
MTBF 981.43841 999.20356 1033.3486 1463.2402
ENOF 0.1715016 0.1708491 0.1697081 0.1629794

Table 5: Change in defuzzified value for spread change in %

Reliability Change in defuzzified value in %


parameters

0% to 15% 15% to 25% 25% to 60% Trend


Failure rate 0.00009636 0.00009635 0.00009634
Repair time 0.14410616 0.22803249 0.80623704 Increasing
Reliability 0.00022779 0.00040508 0.00300558
Unavailability 0.18208118 0.07861351 0.59599685
MTBF 0.01777931 0.03304309 0.29379427
Unreliability 0.00119648 0.00213045 0.01589338
ENOF 0.00380462 0.00667840 0.00396486 Decreasing
Availability 0.00408262 0.00758562 0.00447374

7. Behavioural analysis
Table 5 shows the % change and increase/decrease trend for the various reliability parameters of the considered
system. From table 5 it is observed that the defuzzified value at different spread (15%, 25% and 60%) for failure
rate, repair time, reliability, MTBF and unavailability increase with the increase in spread where as availability,
ENOF and unreliability decrease with increase in spread. Based upon the observations the system analyst/
maintenance manager will choose a feasible defuzzified value rather than crisp value and recommend for the
revision of targeted goal.
8. Conclusion
With the study a quantitative approach for the CHU has been used for predicting the behaviour of the system. Effort
have been made to model the uncertain/vague information for the considered system and various reliability
parameters viz. failure rate, repair rate, MTBF, ENOF and availability are computed and the trend of reliability
parameters has been analysed for studying the failure behaviour of the considered system.
2332 Dilbagh Panchal and Dinesh Kumar / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 2323 2332

Acknowledgements
The authors thanks to Mr. Kharti Lal (maintenance helper-1, CHU) and Mr. D. Prasad (maintenance helper-2, CHU)
of coal fired thermal power plant dist. Panipat, Haryana, India for providing every possible help for the work.
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