Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Reliability:
Reliability is a characteristic of design. It is defined as the ‘probability that a specified
item will perform a specified function within a defined environment, for a specified length
of time’. For complex systems the reliability requirement is normally specified in terms of
the mean time between failures (MTBF) or as a failure rate, for example failures per
million operating hours.
Reliabilty is the probability that a failure may not occure for a specified period of time.
Thus reliability is a function of time which also depends on environmental conditions which may or
may not vary with time,since its is a function of time ,its numerical value always lies between 0 &1,
i.e.
R(0)=1, R(8)=0
and R(t) is nonincreasing function between these limits.
reliability
time
Quality:
Quality and reliability go handinhand and are complementary of each other. Without quality
there is no reliability . For a product or service to have higher reliability, it must have good quality
as well.
The quality of a product/service in the degree of conformance to applicable specifications
and workmenship standards. It is not concerned with the elements of time and environment.
An equipment which has undergone all quality tests may not necessarily be more reliable.
Quality is associated with the manufacture whereas, reliability is basically associated with
design/material. In a way reliability of the product is the ability of the unit to maintain its
quality under specified conditions for a specified time period.
The "intended function" of the product/service is related to the quality. For example, an
electric generator is expected to provide an output of 5 kW at 220 V under certain conditions
which is the intended function of the generator. Any deviation in any of the two parameters
will be termed as the failure of the generator. This may happen today or any time in future.
Environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, vibrations etc., affect the
quality and in turn cause the failure of the equipment/service under operation. Any change
in the operating parameters may also cause failure. Therefore, operating conditions including
environment play important role so far quality and reliability of the products/services is
concerned.
Another important difference between quality and reliability is that one can build a
reliable complex system using less reliable components but it is impossible to construct a 'good'
quality system from 'poor' quality components. This is mainly due to the reason that reliability
can be improved using redundant component/system. But the quality of the product cannot
be improved after it has been manufactured/fabricated. It is only possible through modification
of the product.
Phases of equipment life:
Concept and defination
Design and development
Reliability
Manufacturing and installations
operation and maintenance Quality
Availability:
availability of an item/system is the probability that this item/system will
be in a state to perform a required function under given conditions, at a given instant in
time or over a time interval, assuming that the given external resources are provided.
The long run or steady state availability is defined as the proportion of time during which an
euipment is available for use .
Availability is defined by A = MUT/ (MUT + MDT) where MUT refers to Mean Uptime and
MDT to Mean Downtime.
Here the denominator is equal to the total time for which the equipment required to function &
uptime is actual period for which the equipment is available for use .The downtime can include in
addition to active repair time, administrative and other delays related to repair.
Depending on what is included in MDT, the availability measured is called Intrinsic
Availability (A i), Technical Availability (A t) or Operational Availability (A o) .
Alternatively Availability is the measure of the percentage of time that an item or system
is available to perform its designated function. The simplest expression for calculating
availability is:
availability (A t) = up time/total time for a continuously operating system
this can also be expressed as:
availability (A t) = total time – downtime (scheduled + unscheduled) /total time
or in terms of reliability (MTBF) and maintainability (MTTR) measures as:
availability (A t) = MTBF / MTBF + MTTR
where MTBF=mean time between failure
MTTR=mean time to repair
When establishing availability targets for infrastructure installations it must be recognised
that the availability for the installation will be the product of the availability for the
individual subsystems. This should be taken into account in establishing availability
targets for inclusion in the specification.
For example, if the system contains three subsystems which must all be operating for
the infrastructure to be operable the availability for the complete system will be:
= availability (subsystem 1) X availability (subsystem 2) X availability (subsystem 3)
Maintability:
Maintainability is the probability that a given active maintenance action, for an item
under given conditions of use can be carried out within a stated time interval when the
maintenance is performed under stated conditions and using stated procedures and
resources
Alternatively Maintainability is a characteristic of design and is essentially a measure of
the ease with which the item can be maintained. A more formal definition is
‘maintainability is a characteristic of design and installation, expressed as the probability
that an item will be restored to operating condition, within a given period of time, using
prescribed procedures and resources. The most commonly used measure of
maintainability is the mean time to repair (MTTR). Where the logistical delays aren’t
considered and the time of interest is the time actively spent in repairing the system
maintainability can be measured as mean active repair time (MART).
Failure: Afailure is the parttial or total loss or change in those properties of a device or system in
such a way that its functionality is seriously independent or completely stopped.
Some components have well defined failures,others do not.For ex. Switches and electric bulbs have
well defined failures,either they are good or bad,such devices are known as 2 state devices.
On the other side,devices like voltage stablizer,resister etc have a range of operating conditions.For
instance ,the output voltage of a stablizer might lie within the limits of (V+V) and (VV)
The devices are supposed to have failed only when the output voltage crosses either of these limits
Types of Failures & failure modes:
Failure can be grouped into different modes depending upon the nature of failure
When we put a large collection of units into operation,it is likely that there are a large no. Of failures
intially .
Early failure:the early failures are called intial failures or infant mortality,these failures are
primarily due to manufacturing defects,such as weak parts,poor installation,bad assembly,poor fits
etc. Since the defective units are eliminated during the intial failure period this period is known as
debugging or burn in period.
Catastrophic failure:After the intialfailures,for a long period of time of operation fewer failures are
reported but it is difficult to determine their cause.They occur due to the sharpe change in parameter
determining the performance of the units,either as result of the change in working stresses or
environment coditions but in this case it is difficult to predict the amplitude of stress variation and
their time of occurance,thus the failure during this period are often called random failure or
catastrophic failures.this is the period of normal operation and is characterized by constant no. Of
failures per unit time.
Wear Out Failure:As the time passes on ,the unit get outworn and begin to deteriorate.A gradual
change in the values of the parameters determining the performance of the unit results and when
these parameters go beyond the limits of admissibility the unit fails.this region is called wear out
region.in this period failure rate increases
Causes of failure:
1)Poor design (component or system)
2)Wrong manufacturing techniques
3)Lack of knowledge and experience
4)Complexity of equipment
5)Poor maintenance policies
6)Organizational rigidity and complexity
7)Human errors
Failure rate and mean time between/to failure (MTBF/MTTF):
The purpose for quantitative reliability measurements is to define the rate of failure relative to time
and to model that failure rate in a mathematical distribution for the purpose of understanding the
quantitative aspects of failure. The most basic building block is the failure rate, which is estimated
using the following equation:
Where:
λ = Failure rate (sometimes referred to as the hazard rate)
T = Total running time/cycles/miles/etc. during an investigation period for both failed and nonfailed
items.
r = The total number of failures occurring during the investigation period.
For example, if five electric motors operate for a collective total time of 50 years with five
functional failures during the period, the failure rate is 0.1 failures per year.
Difference Between MTBF & MTTF:
The only difference between MTBF and MTTF is that we employ MTBF when referring to items
that are repaired when they fail. For items that are simply thrown away and replaced, we use the
term MTTF. The computations are the same.
The basic calculation to estimate mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to failure
(MTTF), both measures of central tendency, is simply the reciprocal of the failure rate function. It is
calculated using the following equation.
Where:
θ = Mean time between/to failure
T = Total running time/cycles/miles/etc. during an investigation period for both failed and nonfailed
items.
r = The total number of failures occurring during the investigation period.
The MTBF for our industrial electric motor example is 10 years, which is the reciprocal of the
failure rate for the motors. Incidentally, we would estimate MTBF for electric motors that are rebuilt
upon failure. For smaller motors that are considered disposable, we would state the measure of
central tendency as MTTF.
The failure rate is a basic component of many more complex reliability calculations. Depending
upon the mechanical/electrical design, operating context, environment and/or maintenance
effectiveness, a machine’s failure rate as a function of time may decline, remain constant, increase
linearly or increase geometrically (Figure 1). The importance of failure rate vs. time will be
discussed in more detail later.
FACTORS INFLUENCING SYSTEM EFFECTIVENESS :
The system/equipment effectiveness is indirectly related with the reliability because reliable
system will help the operating personnel more effectively. If the system is effective its
performance can be improved for satisfaction of the customers. An equipment may be in
working condition giving substandard performance will not be accepted because of its poor
system effectiveness. In the present day environment, the customers desire to optimise on
their investments with all possible effectiveness of the system. The system/equipment will be
influenced by the following factors.
(i ) Availability of the system/equipment
(ii) Complexity of devices/components
(iii) Maintainability
(iv) Maintenance system practiced
(v) Maintenance support system
(vi) Failure history of the equipment/system
(vii) Coordination and cooperation of maintenance staff and operating personnel.
Evaluation of System Effectiveness :
In case of complex systems, redundant units are internally built in to help the equipment to
perform their main function. Some systems can perform the same task by several different
means. In this case failure of a unit can lead to decreased performance but complete system
does not fail. Thus, a complex system can require measure of capability that can take partial
failure into account.
Effectiveness can be used to measure the performance of the system in quantitative
manner. For example, quality of fuel used in IC engines can lower its performance, or poor
quality service in cafeteria can lower the number of customers. The system can be said more
effective with higher effectiveness index number, which can be set for different types of
systems.