B102

Epistemic downtime predictions for fresh water supply pumps in high-rise residential buildings

Brief:

This study examines the fresh water pump installations for high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong in terms of system availability, mean time to failure, mean time between failures and restoration time. Together with some reliability data published elsewhere, it applies Bayesian analysis to improve our understanding of the downtime characteristics of water pump installations. For three consecutive years (2005-2007), water pump failures in 46 typical high-rise residential buildings were recorded to determine the component failure rates. In order to study the failure patterns, Monte Carol simulations were performed for the operations of 100 parallel pump sets over a period of 10 years. The mean time to failure, total downtime, failure counts and system availability estimated for the fresh water pump installations were 1.24 years, 8990 hours, 709 and 90%. The results are useful in the calculation of water supply availability for high-rise residential buildings while keeping the balance between maintenance cost and system reliability. This study also demonstrates a method for reliability modelling of water supply for high-rise residential buildings.

Full text:

http://www.irbnet.de/daten/iconda/CIB_DC23991.pdf

Further Information:

Hui KW, Mui KW, Wong LT, 2011. Epistemic downtime predictions for fresh water supply pumps in high-rise residential buildings, The 37th CIBW062 International Symposium of Water Supply and Drainage for Buildings, 25-28 September, Aveiro, Portugal. pp.71-77.