What is System Availability Simulation?
System Availability Simulation is a technique that allows you to calculate availability and throughput of a system defined as a fault tree or reliability block diagram (RBD).
Reliability block diagrams can model complex dependencies and redundancies in your plant or system. Parallel and series arrangements of component parts are easily added in a schematic manner.
The AvSim Module in Availability Workbench can optimize system availability and life cycle costs by taking into account planned and predictive maintenance policies, spare parts requirements, switching delays and buffers, phased operations and standby systems.
How does the AvSim Module work?
The AvSim Module models the logical interaction of failures and their effect on system performance.
Consequences can be assigned to any component within the system model to indicate the effects of failures (financial, operational, safety and environmental). Phasing and the costs and requirements of labor, equipment and spare parts are entered into the AvSim Module and taken into account during calculation.
Once the model is complete, Availability Workbench will analyze the system using powerful Monte Carlo Simulation algorithms. It will return a series of results including availability and reliability parameters, life cycle costs and importance rankings.
Another feature of the AvSim Module is the ability to optimize spares holdings and planned maintenance intervals.
Building an Availability Simulation Model
Like all Isograph software, the AvSim Module is intuitive and easy to use for anyone familiar with Microsoft Windows.
Building reliability block diagrams or fault trees is simply a case of selecting a symbol from the menu bar and clicking where you want to place it on the diagram panel.
When building a fault tree links between gates are placed automatically. In a reliability block diagram links between blocks take just two clicks.
Information is added to each block in straightforward dialogs which can be accessed by double-clicking on the block in the diagram or the hierarchy on the left hand side.