27,530 research outputs found
Exact Failure Frequency Calculations for Extended Systems
This paper shows how the steady-state availability and failure frequency can
be calculated in a single pass for very large systems, when the availability is
expressed as a product of matrices. We apply the general procedure to
-out-of-:G and linear consecutive -out-of-:F systems, and to a
simple ladder network in which each edge and node may fail. We also give the
associated generating functions when the components have identical
availabilities and failure rates. For large systems, the failure rate of the
whole system is asymptotically proportional to its size. This paves the way to
ready-to-use formulae for various architectures, as well as proof that the
differential operator approach to failure frequency calculations is very useful
and straightforward
Maintenance/repair and production-oriented life cycle cost/earning model for ship structural optimisation during conceptual design stage
The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the change in structural weight due to optimisation experiments on life cycle cost and earning elements using the life cycle cost/earning model, which was developed for structure optimisation. The relation between structural variables and relevant cost/earning elements are explored and discussed in detail. The developed model is restricted to the relevant life cycle cost and earning elements, namely production cost, periodic maintenance cost, fuel oil cost, operational earning and dismantling earning. Therefore it is important to emphasise here that the cost/earning figure calculated through the developed methodology will not be a full life cycle cost/earning value for a subject vessel, but will be the relevant life cycle cost/earning value. As one of the main focuses of this paper is the maintenance/repair issue, the data was collected from a number of ship operators and was solely used for the purpose of regression analysis. An illustrative example for a chemical tanker is provided to show the applicability of the proposed approac
Exact performance analysis of a single-wavelength optical buffer with correlated inter-arrival times
Providing a photonic alternative to the current electronic switching in the backbone, optical packet switching (OPS) and optical bursts witching (OBS) require optical buffering. Optical buffering exploits delays in long optical fibers; an optical buffer is implemented by routing packets through a set of fiber delay lines (FDLs). Previous studies pointed out that, in comparison with electronic buffers, optical buffering suffers from an additional performance degradation. This contribution builds on this observation by studying optical buffer performance under more general traffic assumptions. Features of the optical buffer model under consideration include a Markovian arrival process, general burst sizes and a finite set of fiber delay lines of arbitrary length. Our algorithmic approach yields instant analytic results for important performance measures such as the burst loss ratio and the mean delay
Fire Safety Analysis of a Railway Compartment using Computational Fluid Dynamics
Trains are considered to be the safest on-land transportation means for both passengers and cargo. Train accidents have been mainly disastrous, especially in case of fire, where the consequences are extensive loss of life and goods. The fire would generate smoke and heat which would spread quickly inside the railway compartments. Both heat and smoke are the primary reasons of casualties in a train. This study has been carried out to perform numerical analysis of fire characteristics in a railway compartment using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics code ANSYS. Non-premixed combustion model has been used to simulate a fire scenario within a railway compartment, while Shear Stress Transport k-ω turbulence model has been used to accurately predict the hot air turbulence parameters within the compartment. The walls of the compartment have been modelled as no-slip stationary adiabatic walls, as is observed in real life conditions. Carbon dioxide concentration (CO2), temperature distribution and air flow velocity within the railway compartment has been monitored. It has been observed that the smoke above the fire source flows to both sides of the compartment. The highest temperature zone is located downstream the fire source, and gradually decreases with the increase in the distance from the fire source. It can be seen that CFD can be used as an effective tool in order to analyse the evolution of fire in railway compartments with reasonable accuracy. The paper also briefly discusses the topical reliability issues
Managing Well Integrity using Reliability Based Models
Imperial Users onl
Adaptive response and enlargement of dynamic range
Many membrane channels and receptors exhibit adaptive, or desensitized,
response to a strong sustained input stimulus, often supported by protein
activity-dependent inactivation. Adaptive response is thought to be related to
various cellular functions such as homeostasis and enlargement of dynamic range
by background compensation. Here we study the quantitative relation between
adaptive response and background compensation within a modeling framework. We
show that any particular type of adaptive response is neither sufficient nor
necessary for adaptive enlargement of dynamic range. In particular a precise
adaptive response, where system activity is maintained at a constant level at
steady state, does not ensure a large dynamic range neither in input signal nor
in system output. A general mechanism for input dynamic range enlargement can
come about from the activity-dependent modulation of protein responsiveness by
multiple biochemical modification, regardless of the type of adaptive response
it induces. Therefore hierarchical biochemical processes such as methylation
and phosphorylation are natural candidates to induce this property in signaling
systems.Comment: Corrected typos, minor text revision
Classes of random walks on temporal networks with competing timescales
Random walks find applications in many areas of science and are the heart of
essential network analytic tools. When defined on temporal networks, even basic
random walk models may exhibit a rich spectrum of behaviours, due to the
co-existence of different timescales in the system. Here, we introduce random
walks on general stochastic temporal networks allowing for lasting
interactions, with up to three competing timescales. We then compare the mean
resting time and stationary state of different models. We also discuss the
accuracy of the mathematical analysis depending on the random walk model and
the structure of the underlying network, and pay particular attention to the
emergence of non-Markovian behaviour, even when all dynamical entities are
governed by memoryless distributions.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
- …