Advances in Reliability and Safety Assessment for Critical Systems

This book comprises select proceedings of the 5th National Conference on Reliability and Safety (NCRS 2022). It provides comprehensive state-of-the-art research and development in diverse areas like reliability prediction, precursor event analysis, fuzzy reliability, structural reliability, passive system reliability, digital system reliability, risk informed approach to decision making, dynamic PSA, uncertainty and sensitivity modeling, among others. The book is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals working in both academia and industry in the areas of complex systems, safety critical systems and risk-based engineering.

Dr. C. Senthil Kumar joined the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in 1990 and is presently the officer-in-charge of the Southern Regional Regulatory Centre of AERB in Chennai. His areas of specialization include reliability engineering, probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), software reliability, seismic safety, statistical analysis, remote sensing and GIS applications. He has performed the reliability analysis of shutdown system, decay heat removal system, power supply system and passive system reliability analysis as part of Level-1 PSA for the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor which is under construction at Kalpakkam. His contribution in the seismic re-evaluation of Fast Breeder Test Reactor earned him the AERB group achievement award. His current research is in the development of a methodology for performing multi-unit PSA at Indian nuclear sites. He is also a member of AERB’s regulatory review committee on PSA for nuclear facilities. He has earned the Erasmus-Mundus EURECA fellowship for post-doctoral research in the area of ‘Software reliability for computer-based systems in safety critical operations’ at Sweden in 2009–2010.

Dr. R. Sujatha is currently an associate professor, Mathematics, School of Science and Humanities, Shiv Nadar University, Chennai, India. She has pursued her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and M.Phil. at Ramanujan Institute of Advance Studies in Mathematics. She was awarded CSIR-UGC fellowship for doing Ph.D. Her research interests include algebraic coding theory, fuzzy theory and its applications, and reliability studies. She has 25 years of experience in teaching and research. She has guided seven Ph.D. students and two are under progress. She has authored four books, 78 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 22 in international conference proceedings. She has completed three research projects funded by DST-SERB and AERB.

Dr. R. Muthukumar is the director, Centre for Reliability, STQC Directorate, Ministry of Electronics and I.T., Government of India, Chennai. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Government College of Engineering, Tirunelveli, and Master’s degree, M.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the College of Engineering, Anna University, India. He also has a post-graduate Diploma in Business Administration from Pondicherry Central University. He obtained his doctoral degree in Embedded Systems Reliability from the Faculty of Engineering, M.S. University, Tirunelveli. He has to his credit over 23 research papers in international and national journals/conferences and magazines. He has guided many research scholars, doing their Ph.D. in Electronics and Reliability Engineering.

Dr. K. Balaji Rao completed his M.E. and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, in 1984 and 1990, respectively. He joined CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre (CSIR-SERC), Chennai, in 1990. Currently, he is an emeritus scientist at CSIR-SERC and is a faculty of AcSIR. He worked at CSIR-SERC in various capacities from 1990 to June 2020. He was identified as a mentor at CSIR-SERC. He retired as a chief scientist and an advisor (M) of CSIR-SERC. He has led a number of in-house and sponsored R&D projects. Important among the sponsored projects are: (i) A methodology for risk informed in-service inspection for safety related systems, (ii) Seismic vulnerability analysis of brick masonry buildings, (iii) Development of probabilistic seismic hazard map of India. He has guided six Ph.D. candidates (one under progress) and about 35 B.Tech./M.E. students. He has published more than 100 papers in refereed journals and more than 100 papers in conferences.

Dr. Raghu V. Prakash is currently working as a senior professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He specializes in the areas of fatigue,fracture of materials (metals, composites, hybrids), structural integrity assessment, remaining life prediction of critical components used in transportation, energy sectors, apart from new product design. He has more than 25 years of professional experience in the field of fatigue and fracture and has more than 100 journals, chapter publications and 100 conference publications, and has edited six book volumes. He headed sponsored research for Boeing, Aeronautical Development Agency while at National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore; he has developed test systems for use in academia, R&D and industry during his tenure as a technical director at BiSS Research, Bangalore; at IIT Madras, he teaches courses relating to Fracture Mechanics, Design with Advanced Engineering Materials, Product Design and DFMA apart from being a researcher and consultant to several Industries.

Dr. Prabhakar V. Varde is a mechanical engineer by education, a nuclear engineer by profession and awell-known expert in the area of probabilistic risk assessment and its application as part of risk-based engineering. He started his carrier at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1983 as nuclear engineering trainee of BARC Training School and after completion of training joined erstwhile Reactor Operations and Maintenance Group now Reactor Group, served as operations engineering for Dhruva―a 100 MW research reactor at BARC and rose through the administrative ladder and retired in 2019 as an associated director, Reactor Group. During his service, he completed his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 1996 and later focused his research in nuclear safety in general and risk-based engineering in particular, along with reactor related services responsibilities.