A quantitative comprehensive safety evaluation method for centrifugal compressors using FMEA-fuzzy operations

Centrifugal compressors are the key equipment in natural gas transportation; therefore, the safety and reliable operation of compressors is of great importance for natural gas transportation. The harsh working conditions and the complex mechanical structure, can easily cause the failure of a centrifugal compressor, and leads to shut down. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct safety evaluation for centrifugal compressors. The conventional safety evaluation methods cannot describe experts´ experiences and knowledge accurately, and have calculation defects in risk rating. In order to solve these problems, this study proposed a safe evaluation method based on FMEA-fuzzy reasoning. First, this method performs failure identification of a compressor based on the FMEA method and establishes an expert-failure evaluation model. After that, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to perform a quantitative analysis on the model to obtain the failure modes´ risk levels, and ultimately determines a compressor´s risk level. To verify the proposed method, this study performed a risk evaluation for centrifugal compressors in a compressor station. The results of the evaluation showed that the proposed method had a good application effect.