An innovative model for supporting FMEA/FMECA analysis on complex coal fired power plants

Failure analysis through simulation is a useful practice to predict a system availability, maintenance times and costs over even long time periods. So far, computational tools for failure analysis have been designed mainly for electronic components. This paper presents a software tool aimed at carrying out the failure analysis of complex plants composed by a large number of different mechanical components. The proposed software, named TARAS, is described in detail, highlighting the features which make it particularly suitable for the mechanical components failure analysis. To demonstrate the software potential, a test-case is provided, consisting in the failure analysis of the transport line required to feed a pulverized coal steam plant for electric power production. The transportation plant consists in several belt conveyors, unloading machines, stacker-reclaimer machines etc. The work demonstrates a satisfactory capability of the software TARAS to cope with very complex mechanical systems.