A MODIFIED FMEA APPROACH BASED INTEGRATED DECISION FRAMEWORK FOR OVERCOMING THE PROBLEMS OF SUDDEN FAILURE AND ACCIDENTAL HAZARDS IN TURBINE AND ALTERNATOR UNIT

Abstract

The proposed work presents a novel integrated decision framework, based on Intuitionistic Fuzzy (IF)- Failure Mode & Effect Analysis (IF-FMEA), and IF-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (IF-TOPSIS) approaches for analysing the failure risk issues of Turbine and Alternator Unit (TAU) in a chemical treatment-based sugar process industry. The proposed novel IF-FMEA approach-based modelling overcomes the various demerits of traditional FMEA approaches which are faced during the identification of critical failure causes based on Risk Priority Number (RPN) outputs. On the basis of detailed qualitative information related to plant operation, FMEA sheet was developed and linguistic ratings were collected against three risk factors such as probability of Occurrence (O), Severity (S), and Detection (D). IF- Hybrid Weighted Euclidean Distance (IFHWED) score has been computed to rank all listed failure causes under three risk factors. The ranking results based on IF-FMEA approach has been compared with the well existed IF-TOPSIS approach for evaluating the accuracy of proposed modelling results. Sensitivity analysis has been also done for checking the robustness of the framework. The analysis results were provided to maintenance executives of the TAU unit to frame optimum maintenance plan for overcoming the problems of sudden breakdown. The analysis results are also applicable to TAU systems which are installed in other chemical process industries globally.