As vessels are often isolated at sea, the operability and reliability of their onboard equipment are of vital importance. Their definition, control and security are critical elements. At the same time, there are restrictions imposed by naval design and other factors, such as safety, and these must be recognised. Consequently the interrelationships that exist between various onboard systems are highly complex.
In this project simulation techniques were used for the complex task of predicting the interplay of effects related to faults between systems. By gathering and studying the data on elements of various ship systems, it was possible to obtain the statistical characterisation of their failure rates. This also made it possible to characterise the probabilities of failure in a system due to changes that another failure introduced.
The developed model allows the user to set different scenarios for performing preventive maintenance. It also helps assess how they can translate into probabilities of failure, as well as the cost of both equipment and between different systems. As a result, two models were developed. The first is a particular model for each element, which lets the user see the influence that delaying maintenance has in the case of more faults. Each element has some time between maintenance, completion time for each type of maintenance or cause of an error and failure rates. The second model establishes a system to represent the possibility of system failure due to a prior fault in another one.
Moreover, with this tool, one can determine the costs of different types of maintenance and how variations in maintenance time may increase or not these expenditures.
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