RELIABILITY

1)Explain reliability
The RELIABILITY of an item/system is the probability that the item/system performs a specified
function under specified operational and environmental conditions at and throughout a specified
time. Quantitatively, reliability is the probability of success. Usually expressed as Mean Time
Between Failures (MTBF)
BATH TUB CURVE
Most products go through three distinct phases from product inception to wear out. Figure below
shows a typical life cycle curve for which the faiure rate is plotted as function of time.

Infancy / Green / Debugging / Burn-in-period: Many components fail very soon after they are put
into service. Failures within this period are caused by defects and poor design that cause an item to
be legitimately bad. These are called infant mortality failures and the failure rate in this period is
relatively high. Good system vendors will perform an operation called "burn in" where they put
together and test a system for several days to try to weed out these types of problems so the
customer doesn't see them.
Chance failure / Normal Operating Life: If a component does not fail within its infancy, it will
generally tend to remain trouble-free over its operating lifetime. The failure rate during this period is
typically quite low. This phase, in which the failure rate is constant, typically represents the useful life
of the product.
Wear out / Ageing: After a component reaches a certain age, it enters the period where it begins to
wear out, and failures start to increase. The period where failures start to increase is called the wear
out phase of component life.

Reliability Determination
In the adult or mature phase the failure rate of a component or system is constant. Under such
conditions the time to failure follows an exponential law, and the probability density function of
exponential distribution is as given below:

Where ? denotes the failure rate. The Mean time to failure MTTF for the exponential distribution is
MTTF = 1 / ?
If the failure rate is constant, the MTTF is the reciprocal of the failure rate. For repairable system it is
also equal to MTBF.
The reliability at time t, R(t), is the probability of the product lasting up to at least time t. It is given
by

EXAMPLE:
Assume we have an automobile that is operating in its mature phase and has the following failure
history:
Time to failure (hours): 100 800 1280 2600
The MTBF is given by: [100+800+1280+2600] / 4 = 1195 hours/failure
This gives a constant failure rate of: 1 / 1195 = 0.000836 failures/hour.
What reliability can be expected from the automobile after 40, 200, 1000, and 5000 hours?

t-hours

40

200

1000

5000

Reliability

97%

84.6%

43.4%

1.5%

Being able to predict reliabilities is particularly useful in terms of maintenance scheduling of

machinery.
Assume a minimum reliability of 0.9 can be accepted from the automobile, at what point would a
service be required?

Thus, the automobile needs servicing every 126 hours to keep a minimum reliability of 0.9
Product life cycle
Each product has a life cycle, figure illustrates a generic product life cycle. There are a number of
tools and techniques that are most useful at various stages of the product life cycle. For example, at
the design stage, it is most appropriate to use techniques that will be useful for design reviews.
Testing parts for fitness of purpose using accelerated life testing is also necessary at this stage. When
the product has been built it becomes costly to change the design so all design reviews need to be
done as early as possible in the product life cycle.

Development testing is used to investigate the robustness of the product and to identify
any design weaknesses with respect to the load. Development testing incorporates
environmental testing and is used for fitness of purpose of the product.
When the product has been developed, the design closed and ready for production,
statistical process control and other quality engineering tools are imperative for ensuring a
good quality product.

Environmental stress screening or burn-in is sometimes used to test all manufactured

units prior to release to the customer. The purpose of ESS is to identify any manufacturing
weaknesses in individual items.
When in-service, product performance data should be collected to check the product
reliability and also to feed forward to new product design in the form of lessons learned.
More discussion on some of these tools and techniques is given in later sections.
A Failure Reporting and corrective action system (FRACAS) is closed-loop coordinated system that is
used to manage failures throughout the product life cycle. It records information about failures of a
product and when and where they occurred but it also enforces corrective action details are
documented.
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is a reliability term used to provide the amount of failures per
million hours for a product. This is the most common inquiry about a products life span, and is
important in the decision-making process of the end user. MTBF is more important for industries and
integrators than for consumers. Most consumers are price driven and will not take MTBF into
consideration, nor is the data often readily available. On the other hand, when equipment such as
media converters or switches must be installed into mission critical applications, MTBF becomes very
important. In addition, MTBF may be an expected line item in an RFQ (Request For Quote). Without
the proper data, a manufacturers piece of equipment would be immediately disqualifi ed.
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is the time needed to repair a failed hardware module. In an operational system, repair generally means replacing a failed hardware part. Thus, hardware MTTR
could be viewed as mean time to replace a failed hardware module. Taking too long to repair a product drives up the cost of the installation in the long run, due to down time until the new part arrives
and the possible window of time required to schedule the installation. To avoid MTTR, many companies purchase spare products so that a replacement can be installed quickly. Generally, however,
customers will inquire about the turn-around time of repairing a product, and indirectly, that can fall
into the MTTR category.
Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) is a basic measure of reliability for non-repairable systems. It is the
mean time expected until the first failure of a piece of equipment. MTTF is a statistical value and is
meant to be the mean over a long period of time and a large number of units. Technically, MTBF
should be used only in reference to a repairable item, while MTTF should be used for non-repairable
items. However, MTBF is commonly used for both repairable and non-repairable items.
Failure In Time (FIT) is another way of reporting MTBF. FIT reports the number of expected failures
per one billion hours of operation for a device. This term is used particularly by the semiconductor
industry but is also used by component manufacturers. FIT can be quantified in a number of ways:
1000 devices for 1 million hours or 1 million devices for 1000 hours each, and other combinations.
FIT and CL (Confidence Limits) are often provided together. In common usage, a claim to 95%
confidence in something is normally taken as indicating virtual certainty. In statistics, a claim to
95% confi dence simply means that the researcher has seen something occur that only happens one
time in twenty or less. For example, component manufacturers will take a small sampling of a
component, test x number of hours, and then determine if there were any failures in the test bed.
Based on the number of failures that occur, the CL will then be provided as well.

MTBF
When the failure rate needs to be as low as possible, especially for mission critical systems, for
example, utilizing MTBF data to ensure maximum uptime for an installation. It is a common
misconception, however, that the MTBF value is equivalent to the expected number of operating
hours before a product fails, or the service life. There are several variables that can impact failures.
Aside from component failures, customer use/installation can also result in failure. For example, if a
customer misuses a product and then it malfunctions, should that be considered a failure? If a
product is delivered DOA because it was not properly packaged, is that a failure?
The MTBF is often calculated based on an algorithm that factors in all of a products components to
reach the sum life cycle in hours. In reality, depreciation modes of the product could limit the life of the
product much earlier due to some of the variables listed above. It is very possible to have a product
with an extremely high MTBF, but an average or more realistic expected service life.

MTBF =

1
FR1 + FR2 + FR3 + ...........

FRn

Where FR is the failure rate of each component of the system up to n components

FR

Items Failed
Total Operating Time

e t
Reliability at time (t) =

10 components were tested. The components (not repairable) failed as follows:

Component 1 failed after 75 ours
Component 2 failed after 125 hours
Component 3 failed after 130 hours
Component 4 failed after 325 hours
Component 5 failed after 525 hours

Solution:
Five failures, operating time = 3805 hours
= 5 / 3805 = 0.001314
The chart below shows operating time and breakdown time of a machine.

20. 2. 6. 7. 24.4 4. 35.3 1.

2 5 1 1
2
8
Operating
Down
time
time
a) Determine the MTBF.
Total operating time = 20.2 + 6.1 + 24.4 + 4.2 + 35.3 + 46.7
= 136.9 hours
= 4 / 136.9 = 0.02922
Therefore;
= MTBF = 1/ = 34.22 hours
b) What is the system reliability for a mission time of 20 hours?

R = e-t

R= e

t = 20 hours

-(0.02922)(20)

R = 55.74%

46.7