Development of Reliability Model for Furnace System using Spreadsheet

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a furnace as ‘an enclosed structure for intense heating by
fire, esp. of metals, or water’. Other definition defines furnace tubes as an electric heating device
used to conduct syntheses and purifications of inorganic compounds and occasionally in organic
synthesis. (8) There were many types of furnace available today such as pyrolysis furnace, steam
reformer furnace, heating furnace etc. Furnace functions to heat the sample in order to change
the product form such as from liquid to gas or from solid to liquid form. Furnace in industry
contain tube which functions at a very high temperature up to 1250oC and more to heat the
chemical and the furnace system in order to change the product type. The high temperature
operation causes the tubes to experienced tube expansion or creep. Inspection data will be taken
from each tube in order to analyze the expansion of tube’s wall thickness. The tube’s maximum
growth will be different based on the position of tubes. The data will measure the expansion in
tubes internal diameter and external diameter. Analysis is conducted based on the inspection data
to predict on growth rate, time to failure and also reliability of the system. The reliability is
importance to foresee the availability of the furnace system to be used and to predict the time to
replace of new one. From the data, the author can form a failure distribution graph which will
show the pattern of growth from the tubes system.