Determination of Test Intervals in Certain Repairable Standby Protective Systems

A System has associated with it a Safeguard such that whenever a failure in the Safeguard is detected, the System is shut down. The System is restarted as soon as the Safeguard is repaired. An example is a standby protective system attached to a nuclear power plant; as soon as failure is detected in the protective system the nuclear plant will be shut down until repair is completed. In order to insure that the Safeguard remains in the utmost state of readiness, the components of the Safeguard are periodically tested, and repaired if the test reveals a failure. In this paper we define a measure of readiness appropriate for the above systems and consider the problem of determining the testing frequency of the components of the Safeguard in such a way that an adequate level of readiness is maintained. As an illustration, the method is applied to a typical reactor-trip system.