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INDE 6336 Reliability Engineering

Instructor: Dr. Qianmei (May) Feng E217-D3, (713) 743-2870 qmfeng@uh.edu

Handouts
1. Course Syllabus 2. Guideline to Course Project 3. Academic Honesty Statement 4. Student Information

Agenda
Introduction to the course
What are the course grading rules? What do you expect to learn from this course?

Introduction to reliability engineering


Why is reliability important? Why study reliability? What is the objective of reliability engineering? What is reliability? What is the relationship between quality and reliability? Where can we apply reliability engineering?

My Background
Teaching: Reliability Engineering, Quality Control, Engineering Statistics Research: Reliability and Quality Engineering (Supported by NSF and State of Texas) Past-President for QCRE Division in IIE Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA B.S. and M.S. in Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
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Introduce Yourself
Name: Dept & Program: (e.g. INDE, MSIE): Probability/Statistics classes (level and time): Relevant information: (e.g. experience in reliability/quality, certificates) Favorite memory during the holiday:

Course Overview
Text: Ebeling, C.E. (2010) Prerequisites Basic probability and statistics Grading Policy: Homework:

20%

Exam 1: 30% Course Project/Research Paper: 15% Exam 2: 35% Total = 100%
Homework are due at the beginning of class on the due date No late homework is acceptable

Course Objectives
To understand basic concepts of reliability, maintainability, and availability To learn failure distributions and their properties To learn system reliability models, including series, parallel and complex systems To consider engineering design from the viewpoint of reliability To learn how to analyze reliability data

Course Topics
Introduction to reliability Ch. 1 Reliability measures Ch. 2 Probability models Exponential distribution Ch. 3 Weibull, Normal, Lognormal, Gamma Ch. 4 Reliability of state-independent systems Ch. 5 State-dependent systems Ch. 6 Stress-strength model Ch. 7 Design for reliability Ch. 8 Reliability estimation Nonparametric estimation Ch.12 Parametric estimation Ch.15, Ch.16 Reliability testing and reliability growth testing Ch.13, Ch.14

Review Questions
How many Yes do you get?
1. 2. 3. 4. Do you understand the difference between mean and median? Do you know what is skewness and what is Kurtosis? Are you familiar with Bayes' Theorem? If X follows normal distribution with mean and standard deviation , do you know what is the probability of -3 < X < +3? 5. Do you understand the relationship between exponential distribution and Poisson distribution? 6. Do you know the unique feature of exponential distribution? 7. Have you heard of Weibull distribution? 8. Are you familiar with Markov process? 9. Can you derive the CDF (cumulative distribution function) given the PDF (probability density function) for a continuous variable? 10. Can you calculate the integral and derivative of e-x?

Why is Reliability Important? Things Fail


Have you experienced things fail in daily life? More significantly: 1986 - Space Shuttle Challenger
The failure of the rubber O-rings which were used to seal the four sections of the booster rockets.

2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia


Loss was a result of damage sustained during launch when a piece of foam insulation the size of a small briefcase broke off the Space Shuttle external tank.

2007 - The Interstate 35W bridge collapsed


Failure of undersized steel gusset plates was reason for collapse. Engineers who designed the bridge in the 1960s either failed to calculate or improperly calculated the thickness needed for the plates that were to hold the bridge together.

Why is Reliability Important? Gallup Survey

Attribute Average Score Performance 9.5 Lasts long time (reliability) 9.0 Service 8.9 Easily Repaired (maintainability) 8.8 Warranty 8.4 Easy to Use 8.3 Appearance 7.7 Brand Name 6.3 Packaging/Display 5.8 Latest Model 5.4

Why Study Reliability?


Intense global competition and increased customer expectations
Reduce product development cycle time Reduce product life-cycle costs Improve quality and reliability

Rapid advances in technology


More complex and sophisticated systems More challenges for reliability

Increasing pressure on manufacturers to produce products with high quality and reliability

What is the Objective of Reliability Engineering?

Reliability engineering attempts to study, characterize, measure, and analyze the failure of systems in order to improve upon their operational use by increasing their design life, eliminating or reducing the likelihood of failures and safety risks, and reducing downtime thereby increasing available operating time.

Deterministic Failures Traditional approach to safety in engineering is to design into a product a high safety margin or safety factor
a deterministic method Safety factors often result in
Overdesign thus increasing costs or Underdesign when an unanticipated load or a material weakness results in a failure

Random Failures
Approach taken in reliability engineering is to treat failures as random or probabilistic occurrences.
In theory, if we were able to comprehend the exact physics and chemistry of a failure process, many internal failures of a component could be predicted with certainty. With limited data on the physical state of a component, and an incomplete knowledge of the physical, chemical (and perhaps biological) processes which cause failures, failures will appear to occur at random over time. This random process may exhibit a pattern which can be modeled by some probability distribution.

What is Reliability?
A typical definition of reliability: Reliability is the probability that a component or system will perform a required function for a given period of time when used under stated operating conditions

Quality and Reliability


Quality: An inherent characteristic or property (Webster) Quality: State of acceptance of products or services that reflects customer satisfaction (Thomas and Richard, 2006)

Quality
Reliability: State of being reliable Time-oriented quality Quality over time (Condra, 1993) A vital element of quality

Customer Satisfaction

Discussion of Reliability Definition


Reliability is a relative measure, which is relative to Definition of failure from the viewpoint of customer Tail light out Air brake chamber cracked Rubber O-ring brittle Definition of time scale Hours, cycles, miles Definition of operating conditions Environment Design loads

An Example of Reliability Definition


The reliability of windshield wiper arms at 100,000 cycles is 0.8.
Definition of failure Windshield wiper arms do not work properly Definition of time scale Cycles Definition of operating conditions Frequency of your wipers Number of rain days in your area

A Measure of Reliability
Reliability is a probability that a system performs for a given period of time, and it is a function of time T = time-to-failure random variable Reliability at time t=100: R(100) = P(T >= 100) More generally, reliability at time t: R(t) = P(T >= t) Reliability function

Reliability Data
Life data Failure data Time-to-failure (TTF) data time Time-between-failure data Survival data Event-time data

Reliability Applications
1. Assess characteristics of materials (strength, fatigue crack, failure modes, ) 2. Assess the effect of a proposed design change 3. Compare several different manufacturers/suppliers/designs, 4. Predict product reliability in design stage 5. Assess product reliability in field 6. Predict product warranty costs 7. Risk assessment for safety-critical systems 8. Determine maintenance/repair/replacement schedules

Illustrative Applications
Case 1
In a large electronics company that manufactures small electrical parts such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, and inductors, a new component is experiencing a high failure rate. In order to meet government contract specifications, the function being performed by this component must have a 90 percent or better reliability over a 4hour mission in a high-stress environment. Design engineers can not redesign the component because of the cost and time required. What should the company do?

Illustrative Applications (cont.)


Case 2
The Notso Reliable Manufacturing Company has been experiencing a high number of failures with its five-year-old industrial robot used for arc welding. Once the unit fails, it is often down for what is considered to be an excessive length of time for repair. Downtime costs the company $750 an hour in lost production and repair costs. A replacement unit will cost $21,000. The company wishes to determine whether it is economical to replace the unit. The unit was advertised as having a 10-year design life. Should the company replace the unit?

Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability Maintainability


The probability that a failed component or system will be repaired to a specified condition within a period of time.

Availability
The probability that a component or system will perform its required function at a given point in time when used under stated operating conditions.

Relationships among RAM


Definition Reliability Probability of a nonfailure over time Purpose of study Increasing design life Eliminating or reducing the likelihood of failures

Maintainability Probability of repair in a Reducing downtime given time Availability Percentage of operating Increasing available operating time time over a specified time interval (combined effect of both the failure and the repair process)

Course Overview
Discuss reliability concepts and how to answer engineering questions if we know the underlying distributions (Probability models) In practice, reliability distributions unknown How to estimate the distributions based on reliability data and then answer engineering questions of interest? (Statistical estimation)

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