Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) Analysis

What is reliability block diagram (RBD) analysis?

A Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) is a graphical representation of the components of the system and how they are reliability-wise related. The diagram represents the functioning state (i.e., success or failure) of the system in terms of the functioning states of its components. For example, a simple series configuration indicates that all of the components must operate for the system to operate, a simple parallel configuration indicates that at least one of the components must operate, and so on. When you define the reliability characteristics of each component, you can use software to calculate the reliability function for the entire system and obtain a wide variety of system reliability analysis results, including the ability to identify critical components and calculate the optimum reliability allocation strategy to meet a system reliability goal. Likewise, when you also define the maintainability characteristics of the components in the RBD, you can use software to simulate the operation of the system and obtain an array of system maintainability and availability results that will help you to make decisions about the design and/or operation of the system.

Software features

BlockSim supports an extensive array of reliability block diagram (RBD) configurations and fault tree analysis (FTA) gates and events, including advanced capabilities to model complex configurations, load sharing, standby redundancy, phases and duty cycles. Using exact computations and/or discrete event simulation, BlockSim facilitates a wide variety of analyses for both repairable and non-repairable systems. This includes:

• System Reliability Analysis
• Identification of Critical Components (Reliability Importance Measures)
• Optimum Reliability Allocation
• System Maintainability Analysis (Determine Optimum Preventive Maintenance Intervals, Spare Parts Provisions, etc.)
• System Availability Analysis (Calculate Uptime, Downtime, Availability, etc.)
• Throughput Calculation (Identify Bottlenecks, Estimate Production Capacity, etc.)
• Life Cycle Cost Estimation