A Failure Mode Assessment Model Using Evidential Reasoning in Neutrosophic Environment

Among the different modes of transport, marine transport is the most efficient for transporting cargo and passengers across the globe. There are several auxiliary systems onboard the ship. The efficient working of marine ships largely rests on the reliable functioning of these systems. A few of the critical systems on the ship include an air starting system, steering gear system, engine and other auxiliary machinery cooling system, fuel oil system, engine lubrication system etc. It is important to identify the failure modes of every system and take the necessary steps to ensure the high reliability of the system. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is one of the widely used and popular techniques in risk and reliability analysis. The data available for analysis are mostly subjective judgements collected from field experts. To deal with such type of data, fuzzy FMEA has been successfully used before by researchers. But, even the highest order fuzzy set is unable to handle the uncertainty in the data. The neutrosophic set extends a fuzzy set with the inclusion of a hesitancy/indeterminacy component. In this paper, a novel model using FMEA and Dempster-Shafer’s evidential reasoning theory with neutrosophic data is used for identifying the critical failure modes of an auxiliary system onboard the ship. The method is used to demonstrate its usefulness in spotting the failure modes and enhancing the reliability of the system. For illustration purposes, a jacket water cooling system onboard the ship is used for analysis.