ABSTRACT
As a spin-off from research work into hardware-based reliability simulation conducted at RGIT, a specially devised reliability description language was defined. This language provides a means of achieving a unified, rigorous description of reliability problems. The language, known as RDL, was first reported at the Euredata Conference in 1986.
More recently a compiler for the language has been written and software has been developed that can simulate the performance of a system that has been described in RDL terms. Under the auspices of the UK SERC/DTI Teaching Company Scheme, a joint venture has been undertaken in order to carry forward this research work to produce a PC-based package for reliability simulation. This package comprises RDL as the means of describing the reliability problem, the RDL compiler, an upgraded version of the RGIT simulation software and a menu-driven user interface. Application to problems from the offshore oil and gas industry has demonstrated that RDL, combined with software simulation, is an efficient means of specifying and evaluating reliability problems. Moreover, it has been found that, by including certain extensions to RDL, a wider range of problems can be tackled than previously.
This paper reports on the extensions to RDL and on the development of the software simulation package based on RDL. Example applications are also described; these clearly show the effectiveness of reliability simulation in representing the reliability behaviour of real plant which is subject to complex maintenance policies.
