Some computational improvements in process system reliability and safety analysis using dynamic methodologies

An algorithmic approach is presented that leads to reduction in the computational requirements for process system dynamic reliability and safety analysis using discrete state transition models through the utilization of vector processing and a sparse matrix technique. The new algorithm is demonstrated on an example system taken from boiling water reactors. The results show reduction in random access memory requirements by a factor of 20 and reduction in the computational time by a factor of 7 with respect to the original algorithm. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Limited.