RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS

1
 INTRODUCTION

mers expect a purchased product to meet or exceed life expectations and to be saf

providing early signals and information on root causes of failure.

ng of early-production units in the field, analysis of warranty data, and systemat

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 2

 INTRODUCTION

ty evaluations often present a challenge beyond that normally encountered in qual

is sometimes referred to as “burn-in.”

iability?

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 3

 INTRODUCTION

bility data:

le system.

non repairable components within a repairable system).

sential that detailed component-level information on cause of failure be obtained.

ed to mere assessment of overall system reliability. Subsequent subsections descr

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 4

 INTRODUCTION

lure times, are known. The most common reason for censoring is the need to analyze

n that unit would have failed. For example, if a unit were removed from the field

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 5

 LIFE DATA MODELS

ility density function (pdf), a survival function (sf), or a hazard function (hf). T

rated (for one possible time-to-failure distribution) in Figure on slide 8.

purpose or another.

can be interpreted as the proportion of units in the population (or from some st

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 6

 LIFE DATA MODELS

dt. Thus, for a positive random variable, F(t) =

of as a smoothed histogram of a large number of observed failure times. The hf (al

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 7

LIFE DATA MODELS

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 8

 LIFE DATA MODELS

T is a measure of central tendency or “average”

ilure may differ appreciably from other measures of central tendency like the med

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 9

 ANALYSIS OF CENSORED LIFE DATA

e underlying distribution) plotted on special probability paper. Such plots also

times, hazard function values, and appropriate confidence intervals on some or all

oring for failures, and all censoring at the end of the observation period (typica

mps by the number of tied failures divided by n). This estimate requires no assump

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 ANALYSIS OF CENSORED LIFE DATA

ting a life distribution, using an assumed model, and estimating various propertie

s about the shape of F(t) outside the range of 30 to 90 thousand cycles. Moreover,

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 11

 ACCELERATED LIFE TEST MODELS AND DATA ANALYSIS

ut failure for years, decades, or longer. Thus, we might expect that few units will

ars. For such applications, Accelerated Life Tests (ALTs) are used widely, particul

tests for components, materials, or products with a single failure mode.

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 ACCELERATED LIFE TEST MODELS AND DATA ANALYSIS

365 times each day, we could reduce the median lifetime (for many potential failur

g in eventual weakening) of an adhesive mechanical bond or the growth of a conduc

a high level of stress will generally fail more rapidly than it would have faile

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 13

ACCELERATED LIFE TEST MODELS AND DATA ANALYSIS

capture and describe the dominant aspect of the process. For example, failure may

ernative. However, such a model might provide an excellent fit to the available da

Sec 48 RELIABILITY CONCEPTS AND DATA ANALYSIS 14

 SYSTEM RELIABILITY CONCEPTS

ction of time in operation t (or other measure of use), the operating environment(s

ture to compute system reliability. Complicated system structures can generally be

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 REPAIRABLE SYSTEM DATA

tances involving nonrepairable components, the assumption of independent and iden

r repair.

e of system repair times for similar systems.

of the system at the time just before the repair and the nature of the repair. Th

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

assure up front that the product/system reliability will meet customer requireme

er criteria. The goal of FMEA/FMECA is to identify and possibly remove possible fa

product or a system. It might be done initially for individual subsystems. Then t

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

ures using a “top-down” approach. First, one or more critical “top events” (such as

ts at a higher level are caused by lower-level “primary events” (e.g., failure of an

ee analysis, however, differs in its basic approach to system reliability. Reliabil

other contributing events, at all levels within the scope of the analysis. The str

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

rmation for assessing and improving reliability. These include life tests and acce

acturing conditions or operating/environmental conditions that might be encounter

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

n or a specified percentile of the life distribution of the product. For example,

ment of Defense (1960), Quality Control and Reliability Handbook H-108, provides fa

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

defects. After all or most of these defective units have failed, population failur

bility. Manufacturers, in their quality and reliability improvement programs, striv

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

ocess, components such as integrated circuits may be run at high levels of temper

combinations of temperature cycling, physical vibration, and perhaps stressful op

re also expensive and may not be totally effective. By improving reliability throu

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

d implement fixes to affect all future manufactured units. Thus, later-generation

nic systems depend heavily on software for important functionality and flexibilit

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

ity differs from hardware reliability in at least one important way. Hardware fai

icular system state or level of system load is reached. The state of the software

not have occurred if the software had been designed to anticipate the conditions

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 OTHER TOPICS IN RELIABILITY

ystem or the application software may correct such problems. In safety-critical sy

and amount of testing or use to which the system has been exposed. In an attempt

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