The theoretical part of this master thesis lists all the necessary prerequisites which are needed in order to carry out a full and comprehensive reliability assessment of any given process. To do so it provides an overview of reliability in general, mathematical and statistical guidance together with a more detailed picture of the application and description of the process by quantifiable indicators. Furthermore it gives an overview of two important analysis tools, such as FTA and FMEA, accompanied by the basic principle and summary of the Six Sigma methodology and tools. The practical part of the thesis deals with the detailed description, quantification and goals of the process of safety helmet manufacturing and testing in order to be able to carry out a suitable assessment of the reliability by using the necessary set of tools and methods in order to identify the failures and their causes in the process by addressing them with suitable means of changes and corrective actions.

[pt] Em geral, as subestações são projetadas com transformadores em paralelo, operando a meia carga, para assegurar continuidade no fornecimento de energia mesmo que um transformador do grupo falhe. Contudo, essa prática implica em custos elevados, especialmente no que diz respeito ao arranjo de subestações. Uma solução alternativa é a utilização de estoques compartilhados de transformadores reservas e unidades de subestações móveis, que devem atender a um grupo de subestações com as mesmas características elétricas. Neste contexto, esta tese propõe a utilização temporária de unidades de subestações móveis, que devem atuar para atender à demanda de energia enquanto o transformador reserva é instalado. Essa estratégia aumenta a confiabilidade do sistema e reduz os custos operacionais e de investimento para as concessionárias de energia. No entanto, o sucesso dessa abordagem está intrinsecamente ligado ao dimensionamento e localização adequada dos estoques. Para que bons resultados sejam alcançados, é preciso dimensionar os estoques de forma que não haja investimento desnecessário ou um número insuficiente de equipamentos, e considerar pontos estratégicos de armazenamento, de forma que o tempo de deslocamento dos equipamentos sobressalentes até o ponto de falha garanta a minimização dos custos associados. Posto isso, esta tese apresenta duas metodologias de otimização baseadas em simulação Monte Carlo e Algoritmo Genético: uma para dimensionar o número de transformadores reservas e unidades de subestações móveis por ano; e outra para posicionar de forma adequada tais equipamentos em subestações com capacidade de armazenamento. Ambos os métodos foram aplicados a um grupo de transformadores de duas concessionárias reais, visando demonstrar a capacidade da metodologia de encontrar um conjunto de soluções factíveis do ponto de vista técnico e econômico. / [en] In general, substations are designed with transformers in parallel, operating at half load, to ensure continuity of power supply even if a transformer in the group fails. However, this practice involves high costs, especially with regard to the arrangement of substations. An alternative solution is the use of shared stocks of reserve transformers and mobile substation units, which must serve a group of substations with the same electrical characteristics. In this context, this thesis proposes the temporary use of mobile substation units, which must act to meet the energy demand while the reserve transformer is installed. This strategy increases system reliability and reduces operational and investment costs for electric utilities. However, the success of this approach is intrinsically linked to the proper sizing and location of stocks. For good results to be achieved, it is necessary to size stocks so that there is no unnecessary investment or an insufficient number of equipment, and consider strategic storage points, so that the time taken to move the spare equipment to the point of failure minimizes the associated costs. Thus, this thesis presents two optimization methodologies based on Monte Carlo simulation and Genetic Algorithm: one to size the number of spare transformers and mobile substation units per year; and another to properly locate such equipment in substations with storage capacity. Both methods were applied to a group of transformers from two real utilities, aiming at proving the method s ability to find a set of feasible solutions from a technical and economic point of view.

This thesis presents the reader the importance of optimization and probabilistic assessment of structures for civil engineering problems. Chapter 2 further investigates the combination between previously proposed optimization techniques and probabilistic assessment in the form of optimization constraints. Academic software has been developed for the purposes of demonstrating the effectiveness of the suggested methods and their statistical testing. 3th chapter summarizes the results of testing previously described optimization method (called Aimed Multilevel Sampling), including a comparison with other optimization techniques. In the final part of the thesis, described procedures have been demonstrated on the selected optimization and reliability problems. The methods described in text represents engineering approach to optimization problems and aims to introduce a simple and transparent optimization algorithm, which could serve to the practical engineering purposes.