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Statistical Study on Reliability of Ship Equipment and Safety Management

Technical Papers

Statistical Study on Reliability of Ship Equipment and Safety Management Reliability Estimation for Failures on Main Engine System by Ship Reliability Database System*
Nobuo Kiriya**
In Japan, The SRIC third generation database system has become a useful system which includes over 114000 field data about the failure of ship equipment passing the long time investigation. This database system has never been carried out in other countries. And the SRIC is a relational database system constructed using a number of data tables and having many useful functions. It has become clear that the average failure rate of the whole of ship equipment was 7.2 [case/1000hr.] and the work for the repair was 5.0 [man*hr.] through statistical analysis by the SRIC. And, it is noticed that the failure ratio of miscellaneous equipment is about 43 [%]. The average failure ratio is changing at the same level. However, the work for the repair has been increasing from the middle of the 1990s. The actual conditions for the reliability of the ship equipment gradually became clear in this study, but a long term approach of the raise in reliability is necessary in the present time and the future. This paper reports the latest results of statistical analysis and multivariate analysis of the main engine system by using the information of the SRIC. As a result of cluster analysis, the reliability of the main engine system and its characteristics became clear.

1. INTRODUCTION
In Japan, the most typical reliability investigation into the ship equipment by a public organization is The Committee for Ship Reliability Investigation. This investigation activity started substantial research at 1982 in mutual cooperation with industrial, administrative and academic sectors. This was to collect and analyze field data in connection with the occurrences of failure and alarm of the ship equipment in M0 ship operated by a Japanese company. The purpose of this investigation was to contribute to the improvement in the reliability and availability of ship equipment by carrying out reliability analysis using the collected field data and publishing the results and to contribute to the development of the Japanese maritime industry as a result. The background of the enforcement of this investigation is the change of social industrial structure, the problem of the international competitive power of the maritime industry and the demand for development of the intelligent ship and the labor-saving ship. The ship reliability investigation started in this way. And it has obtained the greatest cooperation and sup* ** Translated form Journal of MESJ vol. 35, No. (Manuscript Received Aug. 22, 2000) National Maritime Research Institute (6-38-1 Shinkawa, Mitaka City)

port of major Japanese ship companies, and has been conducted for a long time. Consequently, the collected reliability data hugely increased and the ship reliability database system (SRIC Database System in JAPAN) , which was built as a result of the committees activity, became a large-scale system unparalleled in the world. Although the committees activity itself ended after ten years, there were calls asking for tying further use of precious resources gained by the great effort of many people concerned with the future. So, in response to these calls, MOT (Ministry of Transport) succeeded the committees activity, and SRI (Ship Research Institute: SRI was changed from Apr. 2001 to NMRI, National Maritime Research Institute) continues the investigation and the analysis in the present. In the severe economic conditions and industry in the 1990s, although only the viewpoint from cost cutting is predominant, it goes without saying that both the improvement in ship equipment and the securing of safety is indispensable. That is, further improvement in ship equipment is needed in order to complement many non-safe elements and realize the safe operation of ship, since there are harsh conditions such as laborsaving, low-quality fuel and so on. Therefore, in order to grasp and pertinently evaluate the present situation, analyzing field data on the reliability of ship equipment is indispensable. Although each ship company and maker also carries out measures to improve reliability

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, it is difficult to collect information in industry crossing, and the role of ship reliability information in these situations is very important. While this paper gives an outline of the newest ship reliability database system, it grasps and evaluates the present occurrence of failure, reports tendencies of ship equipment failure in 1982 and from then on, and simultaneously enforce reliability estimation paying attention to the main engine system.

2. SHIP RELIABILITY INVESTIGATION AND DATABASE SYSTEM

2.1 Outline of Ship Reliability Investigation The ship reliability investigation has been enforced in close cooperation with the ship, the ship companies and SRI for a long time. When equipment loaded in this ship break down, information of failure and information of operation are indicated to a specification questionnaire, and sent to the head office in the first phase of investigation. Then, the information sent to the MOT head office is transported to SRI. Then, this information is accumulated and arranged, and used as data for a reliability analysis. Under the guidance of the committee for the ship reliability investigation, the results have been published periodically every year, but after the last report in March, 1992, the analysis reports were irregularly carried out by SRI. Moreover, this organization has responded to inquiries about the investigation at any time. In this way, it also secures feedback system. Furthermore, for effective use of the information, although public use is restricted in part, information is also opened to the public according to the demand of the users. In this way, the ship reliability investigation has been enforced with great effort and cooperation of many people concerned, and has also been playing an important role socially. But in recent years, the reservation of ships for investigation became very difficult because of the changes in the social situation and related business industries. Consequently, although the practical work of collection of new data ended in March, 1999, implementation of the research, such as renewal work of this database system itself and the reliability analysis, is due to continu for the moment, and the enforcement of data supply will also continued. The reliability information about ship equipment in the ship reliability database system is still very valuable. Particularly, the reliability information about the ship equipment with a great number of field data for the background is very effective measure against failure and maintenance planning on the ship, and the ship companies, the shipyards and the equipment makers.

2.2 Outline of Ship Reliability Database System When this investigation started in 1982, the first database was a program-driven system which used the main-frame as hardware and built using general-purpose computer language. After that, since computer technology developed, the second generation system built in the early 1990s is one with a database engine using a relational database (RDB) tool which uses EWS as hardware. Furthermore, personal computer technology has made rapid progress in recent years, and the SRIC as a third generation system regards as important the use of network as shown in Fig 1. The present system uses the general-purpose DB engine and DB tools as software. In other words, the latest SRIC is a RDB system built on PC by an allpurpose tool. And the SRIC is mainly required to be used on a small-scale network. Therefore the SRIC has adopted the file sharing RDB system. The RDB system is a database with a related structure linked by indexes related to a file concerned with the detailed information of failure (the table of failure information: failure data table), a principal particulars table and two or more information tables which explain the state of failure and the state of operation of ship. Needless to say, a table of failure information records the situation of equipment failure. It include not only basic information, such as the name of equipment and date/time of occurrence, but also the cause of failure, the reason for presumption, the influence on operation and the amount of work needed in the restoration disposal. And the principal particulars table includes both principal particulars data in the ship, the detailed imformation of the form of the main engine and other important machines. The failure equipment is specified by a 4-stage (Items 1/2/3/4) equipment code. The equipment is divided into machine type having 10 classifications in Item1, and is specified down to the particular element in Item4. At the present time, whole object pieces of equipment are grouped into 1872 factors.

Fig. 1 Construction of SRIC System on Network

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3. PRESENT FAILURE CONDITIONS OF SHIP EQUIPMENT

3.1 Failure Situations and Tendencies Table 1 shows the state (1982-1997) of the collected reliability field data on ship equipment recorded in the SRIC. The collected data is of 2 kinds, the one concerned with the failure, the other concerned with the alarm. And the total number is about 114,000 [case]. Among these, the amount of data as the occurrence of ship equipment failure is about 77,000 [case], and they form about 64 [%] of the whole. The average failure rate: for all failure data from 1982 to 1997 is 7.273 [case/1000hr], and if expressed at the mean time between failures (MTBF) [hour], it will be set to about 137 [hour]. The following is the definition of the average failure rate: used in this ship reliability investigation. Failure Rate : = N (t) / t : Failure Rate [case/1000hr.] N (t) : Total Number of Failures [case] t : Accumulation Operation Time of Object Equipment [hr.] ( Report of Ship Reliability Investigating Committee , March, 1992, pp.113-122 ) Needless to say, the operation time is an important factor in the calculation of the failure rate. But it is very difficult to find correctly the operation time on each piece of quipment in an actual investigation. For example, with the technique of representing operation time by voyage time, the exact calculation is difficult because of spare equipment or defect of the voyage record thorough the whole term of this investigation. So, although it is expedient, the time factor in calculating the failure rate shall be represented by the existence time of the equipment itself in this paper. Moreover, there were 256 ships used as the object of analysis throughout the investigation time. And when the interval of a failure report group was very long (365 days or

more) in each ship, and when the ship spent the term which the failure report interrupted, the ship was dealt with as a different ship. Consequently, the total number ships as the object of investigation appears to be 376 ships. In all failures of all the ships for this investigation, the average number of people for the repair work supplied to repair failure equipment throughout the investigation time is 1.8 [man], and the average time for the repair work is 1.7 [hr.]. And the average of the repair work [man*hour: MH] allotted to each failure repair is 5.0 [MH/case]. It is not easy for ships to receive others support in a marine environment unlike land industrial institutions, plant equipment, etc., it is necessary to deal with limited a failure situation, which is a non-safe factor checking safe operation with resources of the crew, time and equipment. Each ship invests same part of the manning resource (MR) limited in order to return from a failure situation, and repair the failure situation. Therefore, the reliability estimation from a qualitative viewpoints, such as examination of a repair work, is important in order to estimate direct non-safe situations caused by failure generating and the non-safe situation caused by the lack of man power and time available for failure restoration. The Manning Index [MH/ 1000hr:MI] is one of the quantitative evaluation indexes for machine failure with such a qualitative valuation standard. This MI is obtained from the average failure rate multiplied by the average repair work, and means the amount of man power and time given to repair per unit time in certain failure generation. Fig.2 shows the transition of the average failure rate and the average repair work during the whole term of investigation. This repair work is obtained from the number of workers multiplied by the amount of working hours given to the repair work. Although the average failure rate increased in the second half of 1980s, it generally tends to decrease and level off, and reduce

Table 1 Outline of Reliability Data on SRIC (1982-1997)

Fig. 2 Transition of Failure Occurrence

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Table 2 Situation of Failure Occurrence on Item 1_Level Equipment

by half in the course of 15 years. It shows that the reliability of the ship equipment at present has doubled compared with the early 1980s. On the other hand, the transition of the average repair work showed a tendency to decrease, but changed to a tendency to increase in the 1990s. Labor-saving ships advanced greatly in the long-term investigation. Consequently, the work burden for the ship reliability investigation is increasing every year in ships, and reports of slight failure generation may be omitted. And it seems that there are many factors lowering the precision of this investigation. Table 2 shows the situation of failure generation at Item1 level. And Fig. 3 shows the connection between MI and the influence time by the slow-down or the engine-stop operation. In failure situation, the average repair work and the average influence time on the failure of main engine equipment (Item1=1) and the average failure rate of miscellaneousT equipment (item1=8) are characteristic. The main engine equipment is the classification of machine (Item1 Level) representing the main engine itself and attached machines, and miscellaneous I equipment is one representing pomp, purifier, pipe and valve, etc. Fig.3 clarifies the individuality of the equipment failure. The MI of the miscellaneous I equipment is the highest because of the high failure rate. So a failure in the main engine system has a great influence on the ship, and the failure of main engine equipment needs comprehensive repair work and has a big and direct influence on the navigation. The former is regarded as an important model in a quantitative respect and, the latter is regarded as one in respect of scale. In addition, the failure ratio of the failure with the influence time (>0[min.]) to navigation is about 0.9 [%] in the case of miscellaneous I equipment failure and about 26 [%] in the case of main engine failure, and the difference between these two cases is clear. Concern-

ing the influence on navigation, the failure of main engine equipment greatly prevents the realization of careful operation because of the engine-stop and slowdown, etc., and continues a non-safe situation for a long time. On the other hand, miscellaneous I equipment failure prevents safety secondarily because of the highly failure rate and the lack of man-power and time for the repair work, but it does not have a great direct influence on the engine-stop or slow-down, etc. 3.2 Situation of Frequent Failure Occurrence The sorted frequent failures (>1000[case]) in the equipment (Item3 Level) were shown in Table 3. There are many failures of [852: F.O. purifier] and [853: L.O. purifier] which is shown as frequent failures in Table 2 and belongs to miscellaneous I equipment (Item1=8). These two machines failures account for about 14 [%] of all of the failures. Presuming from this change in the failure ratio, although it is clear that these failures occurred frequently, we can see the use of the lowquality fuel oil in recent years.

Fig. 3 Failure Situation on Item 1_Level Equipment

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Table 3 Situation of Frequent Occurrence Failure

If examined taking the average repair work and the influence time, failure of [114: Fittings and Accessories in Main Engine] and [111: Device around Combustion Chamber] should be attended to. These failures occur often and inflict big repair work burden as well as influence time on the ship and it is clear that these losses check the realization of safe navigation.

4. FAILURE OCCURRENCE SITUATION OF MAIN ENGINE SYSTEM

4.1 Failure in diesel engine and turbine As shown in Table 2., equipment failures in the main engine account for about 9 [%] of all failures, and is strongly characterized by a large amount of repair work and influence time on navigation. In the ship reliability investigation, the equipment of the main engine is divided into the diesel engine and the turbine. But in order to be compared the main engine system, the equipment failures of main engine included diesel engine failures and turbine + main boiler failures. By the generation and by the engine system, the change of the average failure rate and the average repair work is shown in Fig 4., and the change of the average MI and the average influence time is shown with Fig 5. In the failure of the main diesel engine itself, the average failure rate shows a tendency to decrease, but the average repair work shows a tendency to increase slightly. And the failure rate shows a tendency to decrease, however the failures grow serious by because of the increase of the repair work, The non-safe conditions also grow worse because of the increase of the influence time on navigation. In regard to the main

Fig. 4 Main Engine Failures

Fig. 5 Influence Time and Manning Index

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boiler, the average failure rate does not change drastically, but the average repair work decreases considerably, and the improvement of MI contributes to it. In regard to the main engine turbine, the failure rate shows a tendency to decrease, and the repair work shows a tendency to increase. 4.2 Reliability of Diesel Engine System The failure situation of typical equipment comprising the main engine system except the service tank is shown in Fig. 6. Moreover, in order to make clear the characteristics and relations of these equipment failures, the result by cluster analysis is shown in Fig. 7 The explanation variables in this analysis are as follows: (1)Number of failures on each equipment (2)Number of vessels (3)Total existence time (4)Average number of persons for repair work

(5)Average time for repair work (6)Average work for repair (7)Average influence time on navigation (8)Ratio of influence time in navigation time (9)Manning index The failure of ship equipment, as has been noted, is classified into the failures with a large amount of influence time and repair work, and failures with a high level in the failure rate and a small influence time and little repair work. According to these characteristics, the existence of three clusters became clear in this analysis. In Fig.7, it is clear that [112:Power Transmission equipment] failure and [852:F.O. Purifier] failure has mainly influenced to creating the cluster as typical equipment in main engine equipment and miscellaneous equipment. The [111: Device around Combustion Chamber] failure affects a cluster on the failure rate and the repair work. For this reason and by the high MI level shown in Fig.6, the [111: Device around Combustion Chamber] failure has created an independente cluster. The main engine system comprising this equipment is characterised a failure rate that is high and repair work that is extensive. Consequently, equipment failures in the main engine system greatly block safe navigation. Regarding for reliability, the level of the manning index defined the failure rate and the repair work is very important factor. In order to grasp the failure occurrence in equipment (Item4 Level), the ratio of failure elements in the devices around the combustion chamber of the main diesel engine and the F.O. purifier equipment was shown in Table 4. In the failure of the devices around the combustion chamber, the failure of exhaust valve forms about 27 [%] of the whole. And, the failure of jacket, liner and piston also occur many times. The failure of F.O. purifier, cylinder valve, nozzle and bowl form about 72 [%] of the whole.

Fig. 6 Failure of Main Engine Equipment

5. CONCLUSION
The SRIC database system was built as a largescale database system for the reliability of ship equipment after a long-term investigation from 1982. And, the present SRIC became a system with good humaninterface and having useful functions, introducing the newest computer technology and system technology. The SRIC has a strong potential in reliability analysis. This paper reports the actual reliability information for the ship equipment as the last stage of the ship reliability investigation. The following became clear after the investigation terms from 1982 for ship equipment failure.

Fig. 7 Tree Clustering on Equipment of Main Engine

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Table 4

(1) Although the average failure rate for all equipment was mostly reduced by half until the second half of the 1990s, the average repair work has changed from the same level to having an upward tendency. (2) Miscellaneous equipment failures including oil purifier failure account for a large number of all failures, and its failure ratio is about 43 [%] of all failures. (3) Ship equipment failure is classified according to the manning index and the failure rate. (4) Although the failure rate of the diesel main engine showed a downward tendency in the 1990s, the influence on navigation and the work for repair show a slight-increase tendency. (5) The clusters of failure equipment constituting the main engine system can be arranged from the quantity and number of failures. (6) The devices around the combustion chamber in the diesel main engine are at a high level in the manning index, and the number of exhaust valve failures is large in equipment element. (7) Purifier failures occur most frequently, and these failures represent about 14 [%] of the whole failure. (8) About 50[%] of the F.O. purifier failures are concerned with valve and nozzle failures. A lot of information obtained by the ship reliability investigation started in a background in the stringent condition of international competition which was surrounding Japanese shipbuilding and the shipping industry in the early 1980s is still very useful in the present time of the new millennium. Japanese shipping industry is faced with many severe problems, such as

environmental problems and cost cutting. However, it is always considered necessary to analyze the reliability of ship equipment for the safe navigation. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge many people who extended to me their kind assistance and cooperation.

References
(1) S&O, MOT : Annual Report of Ship Reliability Investigating Committee, Jul. 1982, 1983 - Mar. 1992 (2) Reliability Engineering Association of Japan : Reliability handbook, Apr. 1997, NIKKAGIREN (3) Takeshi Hashimoto : Research about Reliability Design of Marine Engine System and Maintenance management Nov. 1985, Thesis Paper (4) H. Tamaki : A Ship Reliability Investigation System in Japan, Proceedings of ICMES 90 and Paper3 (5) N. Kiriya : A Database System for Ship Reliability in Japan, Proceedings of ICMES 93 Paper27 (6) N. Kiriya : Reliability of Electric and Electronic Equipment in Ship Reliability Investigation, Marine Engineering Society in Japan, Mar. 1996, Journal of Marine Engineering Society in Japan Vol.31 No.3 (7) N. Kiriya : Study of Fault Tree Modeling and GO-FLOW Methodology by using SRIC Information, Marine Engineering Society in Japan, Apr. 1998, Journal of Marine Engineering Society in Japan Vol.33 No.4

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