Performance evaluation of subsea BOP control systems using dynamic Bayesian networks with imperfect repair and preventive maintenance

The work presents a dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) modeling of series, parallel and 2-out-of-3 (2003) voting systems, taking account of common-cause failure, imperfect coverage, imperfect repair and preventive maintenance. Seven basic events of one, two or three component failure are proposed to model the common-cause failure of the three-components-systems. The imperfect coverage is modeled in the conditional probability table by defining a coverage factor. A multi-state degraded component is used to model the imperfect repair and preventive maintenance. Using the proposed method, a DBN modeling of a subsea blowout preventer (BOP) control system is built, and the reliability and availability are evaluated. The mutual information is researched in order to assess the important degree of basic events. The effects of degradation probability, failure rate and mean time to repair (MTTR) on the performances are studied. The results show that the repairs and maintenance can improve the system performance significantly, whereas the imperfect repair cannot degrade the system performance significantly in comparison with the perfect repair, and the preventive maintenance can improve the system performance slightly in comparison with the imperfect repair. In order to improve the performance of subsea BOP control system, the single surface components and the components with all-common-cause failure should given more attention. The influence of degradation probability on the performance is in the order of PLC, PC and ES. The influence of failure rate and MTTR on the performance is in the order of PLC, ES, PC, DO, DI and Al. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.