LOSSES FROM FAILURE: RAMS ANALYSIS IN EXTREME COLD OPERATING CONDITIONS

摘要

Offshore field development, especially in the Arctic region, is a complex activity involving risks and uncertainties from a wide range of sources. The conventional RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) analysis has been used, for a long time, as a performance measure of the system. Moreover, it has been applied to identify weaknesses and select the more reliable system. However, choosing the more reliable system does not always mean that less losses from its failure. The purpose of this paper is to modify and adapt a methodology for risk-based RAMS analysis of a production system, based on losses from failures, by considering the effect of the extreme cold operational conditions. The adapted methodology uses risk analysis as a key component for the RAMS analysis. The potential sources of uncertainties and risks involved in the RAMS analysis has been assessed and identified. Further, the losses from failures have been estimated, for case-specific design features, by considering the effect of operational conditions.