Study on Safety and Reliability of ETOPS using Aircraft Operation Simulation

A methodology has been developed for predicting aircraft reliability incorporating both C.C.F.s(Common-Cause Failures), and phased missions. Failure behaviour of an aircraft, or it's systems are predicted. Both independent failures, and C.C.F.s, are modelled by the Markov process, and simulated using Monte Carlo sampling with the robust variance reduction method. Prediction of safety and reliability is made through discrete-event simulation of aircraft operations. A case study is described for investigating the safety and reliability of the propulsion system of two-, three- and four-engined aircraft. This is particularly important for the design of ETOPS(Extended Range of Two-Engined Aircraft Operations) and results are presented for the cases with, and without the effect of C.C.F.s.