Reliability and Maintenance Prioritization Analysis of Combined Cooling, Heating and Power Systems

A combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system is a complex and repairable system containing a large number of components and series of subsystems. When a failure occurs in one component, it might cause a failure of a subsystem or whole system. Traditional maintenance methods might lead to the waste of maintenance resources and a high cost of maintenance. The reliability and maintenance prioritization analyses can help managers optimize maintenance strategies and reduce the total cost. A reliability importance index is one of the factors in maintenance prioritization analysis. This paper aims at selecting the component reliability importance indices to identify the priority of component maintenance of a CCHP system from the perspective of maintenance cost. Failure cost importance index (FCI) and Potential failure cost importance index (PI) are developed for the maintenance prioritization analysis of a CCHP system. A Markov model based on the state-space method (SSM) is used to analyze the reliability and availability of a CCHP system. A set of actual survey reliability data of CCHP systems is used to support the validity of the reliability importance indices. The results indicate that the FCI and PI might lead to different rankings of maintenance prioritization. The FCI and PI will help managers make a reasonable decision for maintenance on a cost basis.