General reliability and safety methodology and its application to wind energy conversion systems

In conventional system reliability calculations, each component may be in the Operable state or the Under Repair state. These calculations derive system unavailability, or the probability of the system's being down for repairs. By introducing a third component state between Operable and Under Repair - namely, Defective, But Defect Undetected - the methods developed in this report enable system safety projections to be made in addition to availability projections. Also provided is a mechanism for computing the effect of inspection schedules on both safety and availability. A Reliability and Safety Program (RASP) is detailed which performs these computations and also calculates costs for system inspections and repairs. RASP is applied to a simplified wind energy conversion system example.