Availability-Based Reliability-Centered Maintenance Scheduling: Case Study of Domestic (Building-Integrated) Hot Water Systems

Abstract

This study investigates the availability-based reliability-centered maintenance scheduling of domestic (building-integrated) hot water (DHW) of HVAC systems. The keeping system availability (KSA) method is adopted, which provides maintenance scheduling by incorporating the effect of the maintenance activities. This method has been developed for maintenance scheduling in power plants in which the continual ability to generate power is a critical issue. This approach is applied to the case of the DHW system of HVACs, which is also a critical system in provision of hot water in buildings during the long cold seasons in Canada. The mean time to failure (MTTF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) are used to measure the availability of the DHW system. Components with different maintenance timings are sorted according to the effect of maintenance on availability of the system. At the end, a combination of maintenance schedules for the components of the DHW system is provided to ensure its availability while avoiding overmaintenance.