Matteo Venzi

A condition monitoring tool based on a FMECA and FMMEA combined approach in Oil&Gas applications

A new approach that combines up both FMECA and FMMEA techniques has been analyzed and apply in the Oil&Gas field. This method guarantees its efficiency along the product/system development cycle and assures a proper maintenance scheduling according to the current condition of the product/system.

Improved RBD analysis for reliability assessment in industrial application

This paper is focused on Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) generation with the aim of providing a reliability prediction in the early stages of industrial product development, in particular the case study is focused on gas turbine auxiliary systems. These systems are made up of hydraulic items (valves, pumps, filters, etc.) and electronic ones (sensors, instruments, control logic); these complex structures can be decomposed to a collection of blocks and interconnections in order to achieve reliability performance of the whole system. System design based on reliability assessment allows project engineers to reduce time-delivery, reduce time for improvements, achieve reliability targets and guarantee availability performance to the costumers. Furthermore a new approach to standby redundancy architectures is proposed in order to achieve reliability assessment for complex systems, widely used in Oil&Gas applications.

Reliability Allocation Procedures in Complex Redundant Systems

In the last two decades, the reliability assessment acquired a fundamental role in many advanced technology applications where environment, personnel, and system safety are mandatory features. This study deals with reliability allocation (RA) procedures that are top-down techniques that allow apportioning of the system reliability goal between its components. This apportionment of reliability values among the various items making up the whole system is based on estimated achievable reliability, criticality, complexity, or any other relevant factors in the allocation process. In the first part, this paper analyzed the main allocation methods shown in the literature in order to enlarge the range of applicability of these allocation techniques, from series architectures to redundant architectures. In the second section, the RA methods were tested on two case studies in order to extend their applicability in the presence of very complex redundant architectures.

TTH library: A new tool for diagnostic assessment of Oil&Gas applications

The main task of this study is the development of diagnostics techniques in order to achieve both corrective and predictive maintenance methods. The use of simulation tools can drastically increase speed, efficiency and reliability in the design process of safety critical systems. For these reasons, a dedicated tool named TTH Lib was developed and customized for lube oil plants simulation. The proposed case study is a mineral lube oil console and the authors main purpose is to verify the tool capability to simulate a typical flow-pressure transient with fast dynamic evolution and show the great support that this tool can offer to achieve diagnostic parameters in the early stages of product development.

Failure modes, mechanisms and effect analysis on temperature redundant sensor stage

Abstract This paper focuses on failure analysis using two techniques developed from Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA), one of the most used methodologies to determine causes and consequences of failures: Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and Failure Modes, Mechanisms and Effect Analysis (FMMEA). In this paper their combination is shown to optimize the benefits of both and overcome their drawbacks. This approach ensures high efficiency throughout equipment design and guarantees suitable maintenance policies. It has been applied in a redundant architecture based on temperature sensors included in a Safety Instrumented System for Oil&Gas application.