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Fuzzy reliability analysis of the compressor house unit (CHU) system in a coal fired thermal power plant using TBGFLT technique

Komal (Department of Mathematics, School of Physical Sciences, Doon University, Dehradun, India)

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management

ISSN: 0265-671X

Article publication date: 12 February 2019

Issue publication date: 18 April 2019

105

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the fuzzy reliability of the compressor house unit (CHU) system in a coal fired thermal power plant under vague environment by reducing the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness and accelerating the computation process. This paper uses different fuzzy membership functions to quantify uncertainty and access the system reliability in terms of different fuzzy reliability indices having symmetric shapes.

Design/methodology/approach

This study analyses the fuzzy reliability of the CHU system in a coal fired thermal power plant using Tω-based generalized fuzzy Lambda-Tau (TBGFLT) technique. This approach applies fault tree, Lambda-Tau method, different fuzzy membership functions and α-cut coupled Tω-based approximate arithmetic operations to compute various reliability parameters (such as failure rate, repair time, mean time between failures, expected number of failures, availability and reliability) of the system. The effectiveness of TBGFLT technique has been demonstrated by comparing the results with results obtained from four different existing techniques. Moreover, this paper applies the extended Tanaka et al. (1983) approach to rank the critical components of the system when different membership functions are used.

Findings

The adopted TBGFLT technique in the present study improves the shortcomings of the existing approaches by reducing the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness, accelerating the computation process and getting symmetric shapes for computed reliability parameters when different membership functions are used to quantify data uncertainty.

Originality/value

In existing fuzzy reliability techniques which are developed for repairable systems either triangular fuzzy numbers, triangle vague sets or triangle intuitionistic fuzzy sets have been used for quantifying uncertainty. These approaches do not examine the systems for components with different membership functions. The present study is an effort in this direction and evaluates the fuzzy reliability of the CHU system in a coal fired thermal power plant for components with different membership functions. This is the main contribution of the paper.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The work presented in this paper has been supported by UGC, New Delhi, India, under UGC-BSR Research Start-Up-Grant No. F.30-72/2014 (BSR). The author is thankful to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Citation

Komal (2019), "Fuzzy reliability analysis of the compressor house unit (CHU) system in a coal fired thermal power plant using TBGFLT technique", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 36 No. 5, pp. 686-707. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQRM-07-2017-0123

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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