A SOFT COMPUTING FRAMEWORK FOR RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF THERMAL POWER PLANTS

Abstract

The thermal power plant is an assembly of various mechanical and electrical equipments which 
helps in the production, generation and transmission of electric power. In this process, there are several 
components which undergo repairs and failures due to various factors such as wear, temperature and so on. 
Hence, there is a need to estimate the reliability of these components as well as for the entire system for proper 
functioning and its safety. 
In the present work, the most important equipments of a thermal power plant are considered for reliability 
analysis.  These equipments are turbine, boiler, compressor, generator and condenser which consists the 
maximum failures due to their rapid working and large no. of components .The frequent failure of the 
components both uneconomical and hazardous problems for the entire plant. 
In this work, reliability analysis has been performed for all the machines using empirical and parametric 
methods and a comparison between these methods has been performed and it has been observed that 
parametric method gives more accurate and efficient results than empirical method. To simplify the traditional 
analysis, in this work a software package using html language has been developed which gives quick 
implementation of reliability analysis of systems. It is very useful for the managers and supervisors in the 
process industries for reliability and maintainability analysis and to implement better maintenance policies.