The reliability and availability of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems

Reliability theory has been applied to building HVAC facilities. In order to do this, the type of probability distribution for “mean time to repair”, “mean time between failures” and “decision time” was first studied, and it has been shown that the log-normal type of distribution applies here. This was evaluated from a large amount of data collected from buildings belonging to seven large real estate operators. Based on those results and assumptions, a “model” using standard reliability theory equations was deducted. The model has been used in a study of the seven large real estate operators.• The study shows that the model can give a good picture of the reliability and availability of HVAC systems.