Reliability Engineering and Safety at Sea

This paper surveys the field of reliability as related to marine engineering. The problems in marine systems are characterized by availability and safety. However, the two are different aspects of the same problem, and the discipline of reliability engineering provides solution tools for both. Obviously the reliability and availability of the propulsion, navigation and cargo handling are vitally important to the economic operation of ships. Equally important are safe handling of hazardous cargoes and safe navigation through restricted waters and in areas of high traffic density. Experience in dealing with marine equipment and systems has shown that the available techniques and methods of reliability engineering should be applied with care in marine engineering. Special attention should be paid to failure cause, mechanism, and mode. Some proven methods are discussed. In general, there is a lack of data on mechanical components and systems. This is particularly true for marine equipment because of its size, lack of standardization, low sample size and operational environment. A data collection program, now running successfully, is described. Particularly interesting is the conformity of observed values with the negative exponential distribution of failure for some items. The future aspects of reliability engineering in the marine industry are discussed.