Availability of the crystallization system in the sugar industry under common-cause failure

Some results from an analytic study of reliability and availability of the crystallizer system in sugar plants are presented. The analytic model was developed in a study of an actual plant. The crystallizer system consists of five basic repairable subsystems in series. Each subsystem is considered as being: good, reduced, or failed. Some subsystems can fail together due to a common cause. The model is based on the Chapman-Kolmogorov equations. Steady-state availability and various state probabilities are derived using Laplace transforms. The usefulness of the study is demonstrated through illustrations