Parallel Monte Carlo simulation for reliability and cost evaluation of equipment and systems

An algorithm for reliability simulation of equipment and systems using a parallel computing environment is developed. A sequential Monte Carlo simulation-based method is applied for generating reliability and maintainability history charts for equipment, from which the reliability indices, as well as their probability distributions, are calculated. A parallel methodology is developed to discretize the simulation into periods, and the simulation of individual periods is dispatched to different processors for efficient computing. Case studies utilizing the proposed method for reliability evaluation of equipment and simple systems are presented. Simulation results are compared with the analytical approach results for the same cases. The study provides the basis for using a parallel computing environment in power system reliability and cost evaluations. The environment used in this paper is Rock-131 from the San Diego Supercomputer Center in La Jolla, CA. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.