Application of Reliability Theory to a Reactor Safety Circuit

S. Babik

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 1968, vol. 17, issue 2, 137-156

Abstract: The reactor safety circuit considered in this paper is that of a “single r from m” design. Such a circuit comprises m guard lines in parallel, continuously monitoring the reactor performance. When r or more lines signal the presence of a dangerous reactor condition the reactor is automatically shut down. Two types of circuit failures are examined, a safe failure which results in a spurious reactor shutdown, and an unsafe failure when no tripping signal can be produced even if the reactor is in a dangerous condition. The repair of a guard line which failed safe starts at once, after the occurrence of a fault, provided that an engineer is available. No circuit failure will occur if the fault is eliminated before r—1 other faults have occurred. The effects of using a single short circuiting facility in the servicing of circuit faults have also been investigated. In this paper formulae for the calculation of the frequency of safe and unsafe circuit failures are derived, treating time as a continuous variable. The results obtained differ from those based on time represented by a series of discrete intervals. Some illustrative examples are given.

Date: 1968
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2307/2985677

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssc:v:17:y:1968:i:2:p:137-156

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-9876

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C is currently edited by R. Chandler and P. W. F. Smith

More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().