ME 383

Reliability Engineering

6th Semester
Mechanical Engineering
ME 383 Reliability Engineering L T P C
B. Tech (Mechanical Engg.) 6th Semester (Open Elective – I) 3 0 0 3

Unit-1 Basic concept of reliability: Importance of reliability in design, Introduction to mathematical statistic and
statistical distribution theorem. Basic reliability principles, Single probability, Load-strength interaction,
Bath Tub curve, Non-constant failure rate, Introduction to simple Weibull plot.
Unit-2 Introduction to reliability function: Structure functions, reliability of systems of independent components,
bounds on the reliability function, the inclusion exclusion method, the intersection method.
Unit-3 Replacement, maintenance and inspection: examples and policies, life time and failure rates, expected
system life time, fixed time replacement, preventive replacement, group replacement, control limit rules.
Unit-4 Introduction to quality control: Examples and definitions, acceptance sampling, operating characteristic
curve, sampling inspection plan, control charts, average run length, control chart construction, inspection
problems, identification of risk factors, estimating survival functions
Unit-5 Reliability in design: defining the user requirement, setting reliability metrics and definitions, risk
assessment, objective based framework for product development
Unit-6 Aspects of reliability: Reliability in development, physics of failure, fault tree analysis, design reviews,
critical items, production reliability, reliability qualification testing, failure mode effect analysis.
Reliability assurance and maintainability, design from maintainability, logistic support analysis, life cycle
costing, risk cost estimate, case studies
Course Outcomes (COs):
Upon the completion of this course, the students are expected to:
1. Understand and comprehend the fundamentals of reliability analysis of
engineering components and systems.
2. Explain and describe the modus operandi for replacement or repair,
maintenance, inspection and quality control.
3. Identify and investigate the system depicting the probable causes of failure and
needs for maintenance.
4. Design and analyze the component or system based on reliability analysis.
Introduction to Reliability Engineering

 Reliability engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with the prediction,
prevention, and management of failures in products and systems. It is a
multidisciplinary field that applies scientific knowledge to ensure a product or
system performs as intended throughout its life cycle.

What is reliability?

The meaning of reliable “consistently good in quality or performance; able to be

trusted.” So, reliability means- reliable with good ability.

Time-based concept of quality.

The usual engineering definition of reliability as:

The probability that an item will perform a required function without failure under
stated conditions for a stated period of time.

Reliability can also be expressed as the number of failures over a period.

Introduction to Reliability Engineering

 Durability is a particular aspect of reliability, related to the ability of an item to withstand

the effects of time (or of distance travelled, operating cycles, etc.) dependent mechanisms
such as fatigue, wear, corrosion, electrical parameter change, etc. Durability is usually
expressed as a minimum time before the occurrence of wear out failures.

The objectives of reliability engineering, in order of priority, are as follows:

 To apply engineering knowledge and specialist techniques to prevent or to reduce the
likelihood or frequency of failures.
 To identify and correct the causes of failures that do occur, despite the efforts to
prevent them.
 To determine ways of coping with failures that do occur, if their causes have not been
corrected.
 To apply methods for estimating the likely reliability of new designs, and for
analyzing reliability data.
Introduction to Reliability Engineering

 The primary skills that are required, therefore, are the ability to understand and
anticipate the possible causes of failures, and knowledge of how to prevent them. It is
also necessary to have knowledge of the methods that can be used for analysing
designs and data. The primary skills are nothing more than good engineering
knowledge and experience, so reliability engineering is the first and foremost the
application of good engineering, in the widest sense, during design, development,
manufacture and service.
 Mathematical and statistical methods are valuable for quantifying and analyzing
reliability, but their precision is limited due to significant uncertainties. Engineers
must prioritize practical solutions and acknowledge these uncertainties to avoid
inappropriate analyses and misleading results. While these methods are helpful in
suitable situations, practical engineering should take precedence in addressing
problems
Introduction to Reliability Engineering

 Effective management is key to achieving reliability in engineering products.

Reliability depends on an integrated effort involving training, teamwork,
discipline, and proper methods across all roles, from designers to users. While
reliability specialists offer support and tools, only managers can lead, motivate,
and provide the necessary resources to ensure reliability engineering succeeds.
Why Reliability Engineering?

 Engineering education is traditionally concerned with teaching how manufactured

products work. The ways in which products fail, the effects of failure and aspects of
design, manufacture, maintenance and use which affect the likelihood of failure are
not usually taught, mainly because it is necessary to understand how a product
works before considering ways in which it might fail.
 The engineer’s tasks are to design and maintain the product so that the failed state
is deferred.
 In these tasks he faces the problems inherent in the variability of engineering
materials, processes and applications.
 Engineering education is basically deterministic, and does not usually pay
sufficient attention to variability. Yet variability and chance play a vital role in
determining the reliability of most products.
Why Reliability Engineering?
 Basic parameters like mass, dimensions, friction coefficients, strengths and stresses
are never absolute, but are in practice subject to variability due to process and
materials variations, human factors and applications.
 Some parameters also vary with time.
 Understanding the laws of chance and the causes and effects of variability is
therefore necessary for the creation of reliable products and for the solution of
problems of unreliability.
 There are practical problems in applying statistical knowledge to engineering
problems. Mathematics have generally stressed the theoretical aspects without
providing guidance on their practical application.
 To be helpful a theoretical basis must be credible, and statistical methods which
work well for insurance actuaries, market researchers or agricultural experimenters
may not work as well for engineers. This is not because the theory is wrong, but
because engineers usually have to cope with much greater degrees of uncertainty,
mainly due to human factors in production and use.
Why Reliability Engineering?
 Some highly reliable products are produced by design and manufacturing teams
who practise the traditional virtues of reliance on experience and maintenance of
high quality. They do not see reliability engineering as a subject requiring
specialist consideration, and a book such as this would teach them little that they
did not already practise in creating their reliable products.
 Engineers and managers may view reliability engineering as unnecessary or with
skepticism.
 However, traditional approaches face increasing challenges due to various
pressures:
• Intense competition.
• Strict schedules and deadlines.
• High costs of failures.
• Rapid evolution of new materials, methods, and complex systems.
• The need to reduce product costs.
• Safety considerations.
 Why Reliability Engineering?
 These pressures increase the risks associated with product development.
 Figure 1 illustrates the pressures contributing to the overall perception of risk in
product development.

Figure 1. Perception of risk

The reliability engineering methods can be applied to design, development and

management to control the level of risk.
 The applicability of reliability methods must be evaluated for each project and design
area.
Why Reliability Engineering?
 The applicability of reliability methods must be evaluated for each project and design
area.
 Reliability methods should supplement, not replace, good engineering practices such
as:
o Safe design for components under cyclic loading.
o Adherence to application guidelines for electronic components.
 These methods are especially useful when:
o New risks arise where normal guidelines are inadequate or inapplicable.
o Risks are taken unknowingly, such as assuming safe extrapolation from existing
knowledge.
 Designers and managers may unintentionally take risks due to:
o Overoptimism.
o Hesitation to highlight uncertain risks.
Understanding reliability engineering principles is now essential for modern engineering
to address these challenges effectively.
Why do engineering items fail?

 There are many reasons why a product might fail. Knowing, as far as is practicable,
the potential causes of failures is fundamental to preventing them. It is rarely
practicable to anticipate all of the causes, so it is also necessary to take account of
the uncertainty involved.
 The reliability engineering effort, during design, development and in manufacture
and service should address all of the anticipated and possibly unanticipated causes of
failure, to ensure that their occurrence is prevented or minimized.

The main reasons why failures occur are:

1. The design might be inherently incapable. It might be too weak, consume too much
power, suffer resonance at the wrong frequency, etc. The list of possible reasons is
endless, and every design problem presents the potential for errors, omissions, and
oversights. The more complex the design or difficult the problems to be overcome, the
greater is this potential.
2. The item might be overstressed in some way.
 Failures can occur if the applied stress exceeds the item's strength.
 Overstress examples include:
o Electrical components failing under excessive voltage or current.
o Mechanical struts buckling under excessive compression stress.
· Designers mitigate overstress failures by:
o Providing safety margins.
o De-rating electronic components to ensure in-service stresses remain below
rated values.
o Ensuring mechanical components have a sufficient margin between material
strength and applied stress.
 Not all stresses can be anticipated, e.g., connecting a 110 V appliance to a 240 V
supply or over-inflating a tire.
3. Failures might be caused by variation. In the situations described above the values
of strength and load are fixed and known. If the known strength always exceeds the
known load, as shown in Figure 2, then failure will not occur. However, in most cases,
there will be some uncertainty about both.

Figure 2. Load–strength—discrete values

The actual strength values of any population of components will vary: there will be some
that are relatively strong, others that are relatively weak, but most will be of nearly
average strength. Also, the loads applied will be variable. Figure 3 shows this type of
situation. As before, failure will not occur so long as the applied load does not exceed the
strength.
 Figure 3. Load–strength—distributed values

However, if there is an overlap between the distributions of load and strength, and a
load value in the high tail of the load distribution is applied to an item in the weak tail
of the strength distribution so that there is overlap or interference between the
distributions (Figure 4), then failure will occur.

Figure 4. Load–strength—interfering distributions

4. Failures can be caused by wear out.

 The term refers to processes that weaken an item's strength over time.

 Examples include fatigue, surface wear, corrosion, insulation degradation, and wear-out
mechanisms (e.g., light bulbs).

 Initially, the strength is sufficient, but it decreases over time as weakening progresses
(Figure 5).

 Average strength decreases, and the distribution of strength values widens.

 This variability makes predicting the lifespan of such items challenging.

Figure 5. Time-dependent load and strength variation

5. Failures can be caused by other time-dependent mechanisms. Battery run-down,
creep caused by simultaneous high temperature and tensile stress, as in turbine discs and
fine solder joints, and progressive drift of electronic component parameter values are
examples of such mechanisms.

6. Failures can be caused by sneaks. A sneak is a condition in which the system does
not work properly even though every part does. For example, an electronic system might
be designed in such a way that under certain conditions incorrect operation occurs. The
fatal fire in the Apollo spacecraft crew capsule was caused in this way: the circuit design
ensured that an electrical short circuit would occur when a particular sequence was
performed by the crew. Sneaks can also occur in software designs.

7. Failures can be caused by errors, such as incorrect specifications, designs or software

coding, by faulty assembly or test, by inadequate or incorrect maintenance, or by
incorrect use. The actual failure mechanisms that result might include most of the list
above.
8. There are many other potential causes of failure. Gears might be noisy, oil seals
might leak, display screens might flicker, operating instructions might be wrong or
ambiguous, electronic systems might suffer from electromagnetic interference, etc.

Failures have many different causes and effects, and there are also different perceptions
of what kinds of events might be classified as failures. The burning O-ring seals on the
Space Shuttle booster rockets were not classed as failures, until the ill-fated launch of
Challenger. It is known that all failures, in principle and almost always in practice, can
be prevented.
Probabilistic Reliability

 The concept of reliability as a probability requires the use of statistical methods to

quantify it accurately. Therefore, understanding statistics as applied to reliability
engineering is essential for progress. This statistical approach is necessary except
in special cases where reliability is perfect (i.e., the item will never fail) or zero
(i.e., the item will never work).
Key Concepts in Probabilistic Reliability

Random Variables:
• Reliability often deals with random variables that describe the time to failure, stress,
strength, or any other performance characteristic of a component or system.
Probability Distributions:
• Common distributions used in reliability analysis include Exponential, Weibull,
Normal, Lognormal, and Gamma distributions. These distributions help model the
likelihood of failure over time.
Key Concepts in Probabilistic Reliability

•Failure Rate:
•The failure rate is a key metric, often expressed as a function of time. In some
models, it is assumed to be constant (Exponential distribution), while in others, it may
change over time (Weibull distribution).
•Reliability Function:
•The reliability function R(t) represents the probability that a system or component
will function without failure up to a certain time t.
•Hazard Function:
•Also known as the hazard rate or failure rate function, it describes the instantaneous
rate of failure at any given time.
•Mean Time to Failure (MTTF):
•MTTF is the expected time to failure for non-repairable systems. It's a key indicator
of system reliability.
 Key Concepts in Probabilistic Reliability

•Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF):

•For repairable systems, MTBF is used instead of MTTF and represents the average
time between successive failures.
•Confidence Intervals:
•Probabilistic reliability often involves estimating confidence intervals for
reliability metrics to account for uncertainty in the estimates.
•Monte Carlo Simulations:
•This technique uses repeated random sampling to simulate and understand the
behavior and reliability of complex systems.
 Probabilistic Reliability Analysis Steps

•Data Collection:
•Gather historical failure data or perform accelerated life testing to obtain data on
time-to-failure.
•Model Selection:
•Choose an appropriate probabilistic model (e.g., Weibull, Exponential) based on the
data and system characteristics.
•Parameter Estimation:
•Estimate the parameters of the chosen distribution using statistical methods like
Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) or Bayesian inference.
•Reliability Estimation:
•Calculate reliability metrics such as reliability function, hazard rate, MTTF, and
MTBF.
Probabilistic Reliability Analysis Steps

•Uncertainty Analysis:
•Perform sensitivity analysis or Monte Carlo simulations to assess the impact of
uncertainties in model parameters.
•Decision Making:
•Use the results to make informed decisions about design improvements,
maintenance schedules, and risk management strategies.

Probabilistic reliability is a powerful tool for predicting and enhancing the dependability of
systems. By incorporating probability and statistics, engineers and analysts can better
understand the variability and uncertainties inherent in real-world systems, leading to more
robust designs and effective maintenance strategies.
Repairable and non-repairable items

It is important to distinguish between repairable and non-repairable items when predicting

or measuring reliability.

For a non-repairable item such as a light bulb, a transistor, a rocket motor or an unmanned
spacecraft, reliability is the survival probability over the item’s expected life, or for a
period during its life, when only one failure can occur. During the item’s life the
instantaneous probability of the first and only failure is called the hazard rate. Life
values such as the mean life or mean time to failure (MTTF).

For items which are repaired when it fails, reliability is the probability that failure will not
occur in the period of interest, when more than one failure can occur. It can also be
expressed as the failure rate or the rate of occurrence of failures (ROCOF).

Repairable system reliability can also be characterized by the mean time between failures
(MTBF), but only under the particular condition of a constant failure rate.
The pattern of failures with time (non-repairable items)

The pattern of failures over time for non-repairable items is often depicted using the
bathtub curve. This curve is a widely used model in reliability engineering to describe
how failure rates change over the lifespan of a product. It consists of three distinct
phases: infant mortality, useful life, and wear-out.
1. Infant Mortality (Early Failures)
•Description: This initial phase is characterized by a high failure rate due to
manufacturing defects, design flaws, or improper handling.
•Causes of Failures:
• Manufacturing Defects: Poor quality control during production.
• Design Errors: Flaws in product design that only become apparent after usage
begins.
• Handling and Installation Errors: Incorrect installation or misuse.
•Mitigation Strategies:
• Burn-In Testing: Operating products for a period to identify and eliminate early
failures before reaching customers.
• Improved Quality Control: Stringent checks during manufacturing to reduce
defects.
• Training and Instructions: Providing proper guidelines for handling and
installation.
2. Useful Life (Random Failures)
•Description: The failure rate is relatively low and constant during this phase. The
product is expected to function reliably with occasional random failures.
•Causes of Failures:
• Random Component Failures: Failures occurring due to external factors like
environmental conditions.
• Usage Stress: Failures caused by unexpected stress or overload.
•Mitigation Strategies:
• Preventive Maintenance: Regular inspections and maintenance to ensure
continued reliability.
• Redundancy: Incorporating backup systems or components to maintain
functionality in case of failure.
• Monitoring and Diagnostics: Using sensors and diagnostics to detect issues
before the cause failure.
3. Wear-Out (End-of-Life Failures)
•Description: The failure rate increases as the item approaches the end of its
designed life. Components wear out, leading to increased failures.
•Causes of Failures:
• Material Degradation: Wear and tear over time, such as corrosion or
fatigue.
• Aging Components: Loss of performance due to age-related factors.
•Mitigation Strategies:
• Design for Longevity: Using high-quality materials and components to
extend the wear-out phase.
• Scheduled Replacement: Replacing parts or the entire product before
failure occurs.
• Lifetime Prediction Models: Using statistical models to predict when wear-
out failures are likely to occur.
The pattern of failures with time (repairable items)

Rate of Occurence of failure

1. Failure Rates (ROCOF) and Time Trends

o Failure rates of repairable items can vary over time, providing important
insights into system reliability.

2. Constant Failure Rate (CFR)

o Indicates externally induced failures, similar to the constant hazard rate for
non-repairable items.

o Common in complex systems under repair or overhaul, where:

 Different parts exhibit distinct failure patterns over time.

 Parts have varying ages since repair or replacement.

3. Decreasing Failure Rate (DFR)

o Occurs when reliability improves through progressive repairs.

o Defective parts that fail early are replaced by functional ones.

o Example: "Burn-in" processes applied to electronic systems or components

to stabilize performance.

4. Increasing Failure Rate (IFR)

o Happens when wear-out failure modes of parts dominate as the system ages.

5. Illustration with the Bathtub Curve

o The pattern of failures in repairable systems can be visualized using a

bathtub curve, with failure rate (ROCOF) plotted against age instead of
hazard rate.
Development of Reliability Engineering: A Brief Summary

1. Origins in the 1950s:

o Reliability engineering emerged in the U.S. during the 1950s due to increasing
failure rates in complex military electronic systems.
o Solid-state electronics offered potential but brought challenges like
miniaturization and complexity.
2. AGREE Report (1952):
o The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and electronics industry established
the Advisory Group on Reliability of Electronic Equipment (AGREE).
o Recommendations included:
 Testing equipment under high-stress environments (e.g., temperature,
vibration).
 Long-duration tests to identify weak areas early.
 Statistical reliability demonstrations for equipment acceptance.
o AGREE testing was formalized in MIL-STD 781.
Development of Reliability Engineering: A Brief Summary

3. Advances in Testing and Standards:

o Screening techniques (e.g., temperature cycling, vibration) replaced
traditional sampling methods.
o Standards for high-reliability (“Hi-rel”) components were developed,
influencing international practices.
4. Adoption by NASA and DOD:
o NASA and other organizations adopted AGREE concepts.
o MIL-STD-785 (1965) mandated integrating reliability engineering into all
phases of design and production.
5. Cost-Benefit of Reliability:
o Life Cycle Costs (LCC) demonstrated the long-term savings of early
reliability engineering efforts.
6. British Standards:
o The UK issued Defence Standard 00-40 and BS 5760 (1981) to manage
reliability and maintainability.
Development of Reliability Engineering: A Brief Summary

7. Japanese Quality Revolution:

o In the 1980s, Japan's industrial reliability surpassed Western standards,
driven by Total Quality Management (TQM) and continuous improvement
principles.
o American influences: J.R. Juran and W. Edwards Deming.
o Outcomes: Increased reliability, lower costs, better features, and global
market penetration.
8. Modern Expectations:
o Today, high reliability is expected in consumer and industrial products.
o Modern systems, including electronics and automobiles, are significantly
more reliable than those of the past.
9. Statistical Methods in Reliability:
o Reliability as a probability allows the application of statistical methods.
o However, due to high variability and uncertainty in engineering, refined
quantitative techniques may sometimes be misleading.
Development of Reliability Engineering: A Brief Summary

10. Quality Control and Reliability:

o Quality control in manufacturing processes is fundamental to achieving
product reliability.
These advancements have shaped the modern landscape of reliability engineering,
emphasizing testing, quality control, and continuous improvement as key pillars.