Search results for "Reliability and Quality"
showing 10 items of 386 documents
Early-design improvement of human reliability in an experimental facility: A combined approach and application on SPES
2019
Abstract SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) is a second-generation Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) facility for advanced nuclear physics applications, currently under construction at INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics) of Legnaro, Italy. Despite the potentially important safety implications of human errors for ISOL facilities, only a limited number of studies addressing this issue have been performed worldwide. This paper tries to address this need by means of an integrated approach of Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and three human error quantification methods: HEART (in an enhanced version), SPAR-H, and CREAM. The application of multiple Human Reliability Analysis (…
AnyDSL: a partial evaluation framework for programming high-performance libraries
2023
This paper advocates programming high-performance code using partial evaluation. We present a clean-slate programming system with a simple, annotation-based, online partial evaluator that operates on a CPS-style intermediate representation. Our system exposes code generation for accelerators (vectorization/parallelization for CPUs and GPUs) via compiler-known higher-order functions that can be subjected to partial evaluation. This way, generic implementations can be instantiated with target-specific code at compile time. In our experimental evaluation we present three extensive case studies from image processing, ray tracing, and genome sequence alignment. We demonstrate that using partial …
Distinguishing the roles of carrier and biofilm in filtering media for the removal of pharmaceutical compounds from wastewater
2017
Abstract Pharmaceutical compounds (PCs) represent a large group of micropollutants in wastewaters (WW) worldwide. Many PCs are resistant to conventional WW treatment. Moreover, for some PCs the removal process is reversible. The aim of this study was to test three newly developed ceramic carriers for biofilm formation and PCs removal. The testing of untreated WW samples by liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap mass spectrometry allowed to detect the occurrence of 18 PCs in the range from 26 ng/L to 20,688 ng/L, with the highest concentrations found for caffeine. Besides, among PCs with concentrations above 1,000 ng/L, ibuprofen (19,234 ng/L), naproxen (1,405 ng/L), xylazine (1,366 ng/L)…
From common operational picture to common situational understanding: An analysis based on practitioner perspectives
2021
Abstract The concepts of Situational Awareness (SA) and Common Operational Picture (COP) are closely related and well-acknowledged to be crucial factors for effective emergency management. In multi-agency operations, such as extreme weather events, the involved first responders manage the event with different mandates, objectives, and tools which can make it challenging to build a COP. Effective collaboration requires a common situational understanding, based on knowledge about each other’s responsibilities and tasks, mutual respect and trust, as well as common communication tools for emergency communication and information sharing. This paper argues that the COP serves as a basis for decid…
Empowering leadership, mindful organizing and safety performance in a nuclear power plant: A multilevel structural equation model
2020
Abstract The aim of this paper is to develop and test a model in which empowering leadership is expected to contribute to developing mindful organizing, which in turn should contribute to safety compliance and safety participation. Empowering leadership was measured at Time 1, and the rest of the variables were measured two years later (Time 2). The sample used for the analyses in this study included 49 teams and 200 employees from a company in the nuclear generation industry with three different sites. The multilevel structural equation analysis performed to test the proposed model revealed an acceptable fit, and most of the paths were statistically significant and presented the expected s…
Load capacity and deflection of fire-resistant steel beams
1990
The methodology of defining safety of constructions in fire has not yet been sufficiently verified and agreed upon. This paper includes calculation results for steel beams, which prove that the ultimate load-bearing capacity predicted by plastic design theory, which is valid in engineering calculations, is not sufficient for determining the critical temperature. The reason is that this temperature tends to be limited in some cases by large deflections of beams in fire.
Analysis of a Collapsed Long-Span Reinforced Concrete Roof in South Italy: Design Mistakes and Material Degradation
2020
In 2004, during ordinary maintenance work, consisting of waterproofing a building located in the south of Italy, the long-span (14.5 m) in situ RC roof partially collapsed. The building, constructed in 1950, was in service as a cinema until 1967 and then utilized as a school until 1985. Lastly, it was a hotel until 2000. In 2004, when the building was not in service and was undergoing maintenance work, it partially collapsed under dead load. After the collapse, which involved a large portion of the roof, several beams, and two columns, the Italian court nominated an official technical consultant to investigate the direct and related causes of the failure. After the main causes were identifi…
Excessive Deflection in Long-Span Timber Beams of a Historical Building in the South of Italy: Analysis and Retrofitting Design
2020
AbstractIn 2018, under service conditions, excessive deflections were observed in the long-span timber beams of the first floor of the former Sant’Elisabetta Monastery in Palermo (Italy). The build...
The power of empowering team leadership over time: A multi-wave longitudinal study in nuclear power plants
2021
Abstract Team attitudes in critical infrastructures are essential to achieving reliable operations despite internal and external challenges, and empowering team leadership (ETL) may be an important precursor of these attitudes. The present study aimed to test whether ETL was related to teams’ satisfaction trajectories, measured as changes in job satisfaction and safety satisfaction at three time points. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 48 teams from two Spanish nuclear facilities in three different waves (2008, 2011, and 2014). Growth Modeling using hierarchical linear models with SPSS 20.0 revealed that ETL was positively related to initial levels of teams’ job and safety satisfaction…
Non linear and linearized combination coefficients for modal pushover analysis
2017
Current design practice and seismic codes tend to assess seismic demand of buildings by Non linear Static Analysis (NSA), based on the evaluation of the pushover curve. Earlier non-linear static analysis procedure estimate the response peak value by evaluating the push-over curve adopting a distribution of invariant forces proportional to the fundamental vibration mode. In order to include the effect of higher modes several multimodal push-over analysis procedures were proposed in literature. In In the most famous of these, namely Modal Pushover Analysis (MPA), nodal response peak values are obtained by combination of "modal" responses by the traditional SRSS or CQC methods: the use of the …