Reliability Phase Diagrams and Maintenance Phases
You can use BlockSim 7’s intuitive new Phase Diagram Sheets to model systems that go through different phases during the course of their operation. For example, some aircraft components (such as landing gear) operate only during the take-off and landing phases of a mission and others (such as engines) may experience a higher failure rate during these phases due to higher stress. Likewise, a manufacturing plant’s production may differ during the day shift and the night shift, and so on.
To model these types of situations, simply create an RBD to describe the system’s operation during each phase and use a Phase Diagram to describe how the system proceeds through the phases over time. Exclusively in BlockSim 7, you have the ability to completely change the system configuration and component properties from one phase to another.
In addition, the software provides the option to define Maintenance Phases to model scenarios in which a system goes directly to maintenance under specified conditions. For example, if a failure occurs on an aircraft during taxiing, it will go directly to maintenance and, once repaired, will start over again from the beginning of the mission -- not from where it was when the failure occurred, as prior RBD analyses were forced to assume. This flexibility provides a tremendous leap forward in the ability to simulate system operation more realistically.
