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The successful diagnosis of nuclear power equipment failures plays a vital role in guaranteeing the safe operation of nuclear power systems. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is one of the most commonly used methods for identifying potential failures. However, several shortcomings associated with the conventional FMEA method limit its further application. This paper develops an extended FMEA approach based on hesitant fuzzy linguistic Z-numbers (HFLZNs). Firstly, the concept of HFLZNs is proposed to describe the evaluation information, which inherits the prominent features of the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set and linguistic Z-numbers (LZNs). Secondly, an HFLZN assessment method is developed to determine the weights of risk factors, and the weights of experts are measured based on hesitation degree. Subsequently, considering the psychological characteristics of decision makers, Tomada de Decisão Iterativa Multicritério and LZNs are integrated to obtain the risk ranking of failure modes. Finally, the practicability of the extended FMEA method is proven by an illustrative example concerning the risk evaluation of a nuclear main pump bearing, and its robustness is verified by indepth analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the double pressure of global energy consumption and climate change, nuclear power has become a low-carbon alternative energy source that could transform the energy structure of the globe. In the nuclear power industry, selecting suitable suppliers plays a significant role in improving the overall performance of nuclear power projects. Along with this symmetrical impact, this paper aims to develop a multistage decision-support framework to determine the optimal nuclear power equipment supplier, which is constructed in the context of Z-number information. Concretely, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Tomada de Decisão Iterativa Multicritério (TODIM) are extended by Z-numbers symmetrically—namely, Z-ANP and Z-TODIM. Z-ANP is first applied to analyze the symmetrical interdependence of criteria, so as to accurately determine the criterion weights. Further, the ranking of alternatives is obtained by Z-TODIM, which sufficiently considers the risk preference and psychological states of decision-makers. Finally, a practical case of nuclear-grade cable procurement in the Karachi 2-3 international nuclear power project is performed to illustrate the practicality of the proposed method, and its robustness and superiority are proven by comparing it with current representative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probabilistic interval‐valued hesitant fuzzy sets (PIV‐HFSs) are suitable for aggregating information from different groups because the probabilistic information of all the groups can be included by using interval values. Moreover, decision makers (DMs) prefer to use interval values to provide evaluation information. Furthermore, the traditional multi‐criteria group decision‐making (MCGDM) approach has some limitations, such as obtaining the DMs' weights with inappropriate methods and neglecting the interactions amongst the criteria and the psychological characteristics of DMs. Motivated by these research background, the main contents of this study are as follows. First, PIV‐HFSs are proposed, and the convex combination operation is extended into PIV‐HFSs. Second, a hybrid MCGDM approach with PIV‐HFSs is suggested that is based on the maximizing deviation method, fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive and multi‐criteria decision‐making model). Third, an evaluation case of health management centres based on the service‐specific failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is considered. The results show that the most crucial secondary factor is frequency (0.35775) and that the most serious failure mode is the inaccurate check‐in. The results demonstrate that the proposed model can evaluate service quality effectively and that it performs better than other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]