RELIABLE ELEMENTS OF

DESIGN
Dr. Shouri P.V.
Associate Prof. in Mechanical Engineering,
Model Engineering College,
Thrkkakara, Cochin 682 021, Kerala.
E-mail: pvshouri@mec.ac.in

Design Process

Design process is a collection of

procedures and habits that help teams
design better products

Design - Then and Now

How dose CE Reduce Time?

What Do the End Users

Want?

Performance & Functionality

Affordability
Ease of use including ergonomics
Reliability and Long life
Safety
Low maintenance and easy assembly
Aesthetics

This amusing picture, of an anti-drug

propaganda pencil whose message is subverted
simply by sharpening it. The truth is stranger
than some of the fictions that accompany it: it
was sent to schools and recalled only after a
child noticed the problem. (From a 1998 New
York Times report)

Aging is a Very General Phenomenon!

According to Reliability Theory:

Aging is NOT just growing old

Instead

Aging is a degradation to failure:

becoming sick, frail and dead

Product Design

Design for Whom?

Is the Customer Satisfied?

Ultimate Goal of a
Designer

Design - An Iterative
Process

Is Product Design a
Compromise?

Viability, Feasibility,
Desirability

Break-Even Analysis
Some managerial questions:
How much should we produce to break
even?
For a specific volume, should we
manufacture the product ourselves, or
outsource?
For machine alternatives A and B, at what
volumes should we use machine A and at
what volumes, machine B?

Break-even Chart

Designer, User, Client

At times the user, the client and the customer

could be the same or different

Spiral of Progress in
Quality

Factors Affecting Product

Quality

What is Cost of Quality?

Its a term thats widely used and widely
misunderstood.
The cost of quality isnt the price of creating
a quality product or service. Its the cost of
NOT creating a quality product or service.
Types Quality Costs:
(1)
(3)

Internal Failure Cost

(2
)

External
Cost

Failure

Appraisal Cost

(4
)

Prevention Cost

Optimum Quality

Function, Objectives and

Constraints in Design
Function
Objectiv
e
Constrai
nts

What does component do?

What is to be maximized or
minimized?
What
non-negotiable
conditions
must be met?
What negotiable but desirable
conditions ...?

Stiffness and strength might be absolute

requirements - hard constraints
Cost might be negotiable - a soft constraint

Why Over Design?

How Many of These Options

Have You Ever Used?

In
the
beginning
as
you
add
features/functionality there is a good rise in
user experience. But it plateaus quickly with a
sharp degradation.

Stages of Product life in

market

Point of Re-invention

Life Cycle Extensions

Life Cycle extensions can be achieved by
altering
the marketing mix:
1)Product
2)Price
3)Promotion
4)Channels of Distribution

Companies want their products to enjoy a long life

cycle
Altering the marketing mix can extend the
product life cycle

Not all products follow the conventional

product life cycle

Apple's designs have consistently made

other desktops look bland and boring

Coca-Cola contour bottle is a masterpiece in

industrial design that dates back to 1915

Conceived in 1932 by George Carwardine, a car

designer who was working on vehicle
suspension systems at the time

Designed by Phillipe Starck in 1990, the Juicy

Salif is exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art
in New York - the design is based on the shape
of a squid.

Cash Flow Involved at Various

Stages

Generalized Life Cycle

Diagram

Cost of Design
Cost of design is relatively low for a product.
However design is significantly responsible for
the cost of its realization
A good design always brings down the cost
Hence a good design should focus on cost
aspects of the product beyond its function and
strength
This should be taken care of during every phase
of design

Cost of Change

Effort & Cost

On an average, it takes about $ 1 Billion

and 10 years to bring a new drug to
market

Concurrent Vs. Traditional

Engineering

Reliability Defined
Reliability is "quality changing over
time
As time tends to infinity reliability tends to
zero.
Reliability terminates with a failure that is,
unreliability occurs.
Elements of Reliability:
(1) Probability
(2) Function
(3) Working Conditions

Need for Fool-Proof System

Design
Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic
part of our nature. System design should
take this into account.
The system should be designed so that a
single act by a single person could cause
not cause calamity.

Emergence of Reliability
Engineering
The first recorded usage of the word
reliability dates back to the 1800s, and
was referred to a person and not a
technical system
The word reliability was first coined by
the English poet Samuel T. Coleridge, who
along with William Wordsworth started
the English romantic movement.

These lines Coleridge was writing in the year

1816, in praise of his friend the poet Robert
Southey

The triode invented by Lee de Forest in 1906,

which at the onset of World War II initiated the
electronic revolution, enabling a series of
applications such as the radio, television, radar
and others.
During World War II, airborne radios delivered
into remote locations of war had appalling
reliability of only about 17%.
War efforts also produced a new weapon of
terror - the V-1 rocket. The V-1 rocket had a
demonstrated reliability of 1 success out of 11
attempts for a calculated reliability of 9%.

The V-2 rocket is a result of Werner Von Brauns

redesign of V-1 rocket using the principles of
redundancy to enhance the rockets reliability.
The V-2 results are written in the history
books
for
a
demonstrated
reliability
improvement program that resulted in the
building of more than 8,000 V-2 rocket motors
of which 6,300 were fired.
Compare the V-2 quantities to only 44 SCUD
missiles fired during the Gulf war and most
people today still remember terror falling from
the skies via CNN broadcasts.

V1

V2

SCUD

The V-1 was first launched in the summer of 1944,

and over the next several months thousands of the
missiles were directed toward London. As they flew,
the engines made a distinctive sound, leading the
English to call them buzz bombs.

The Korean War was a war of "high"

technology .
However, studies showed $2 of maintenance
costs for every $1 of capital costs during the
Korean War. High maintenance costs led to
establishment of reliability requirements for
procurement of equipment.

The first textbooks were written for the

emerging field of reliability during the early
1960s
During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s applications of
reliability principles were put to work.
During the mid 1990s, continuous process
industries such as petrochemical and refining
began active, formal, programs to improve
reliability and decrease costs.
Books on the subject of reliability engineering
have exploded in sales volumes during the
1990s. The new books are an engineering

Presently, the largest number of reliability

engineers in the world is concentrated in the
automotive industry.
Some
automotive
companies
estimate
warranty cost represents 1/3 the cost for a
new automobile. This cost pressure results in
reliability engineers working to reduce the cost
of unreliability in the automotive industry for
one reason - prevent loss of money.

Three Faces of Reliability

F a ilu re R a te

We see Reliability as three phenomena

that are often lumped together to form a
bathtub curve
E a rly F a ilu re s
C o n s ta n t
F a ilu re R a te

In c r e a s in g
F a ilu re
R a te

T im e

The value of bathtub curves lies in

understanding concepts behind different
failure rates and the medicine required

Problem to be Addressed
by the Reliability Engineer

Time

The product starts to wear out as soon as you get

the quality issues sorted out.not fair to the
customer!

Infant Mortality Rate

India 44 deaths per 1000 live births
Goa and Manipur 11
Kerala 12
Madhya Pradesh 59
U. S. 6.3
Singapore 2.3
Japan 2.8
China 20.25
Sri Lanka 18.5

Life Expectancy
India 65.5
Kerala - 74
Madhya Pradesh 58
U. S. 78.2
Singapore 81.6
Japan 82.9
China 73.3
Sri Lanka 74.7

Basic Reliability Equation

Reliability is a measure of the probability for
failure-free operation and is often expressed as
t

R (t ) e

Z ( t ) dt
0

Key parameters describing reliability are mean

time to failure, mean time between/before repairs,
mean life of components, failure rate and the
maximum number of failures in a specific timeinterval.

Constant Hazard Model

For a component with constant failure rate, the
reliability equation reduces to:

R(t ) e

where is the constant failure rate

In reality, even though this holds good only inbetween the period of infant mortality and wearout, it is often a reasonably good assumption as
this time frame is equal to almost the entire lifetime
of any equipment.

Variation of Reliability with

Time

(t)
Time

The constant hazard model is generally used

for the calculation of component reliabilities for
a given system.

MTBF of a Constant Hazard

Model
The constant failure rate model is widely used in
the literature to reduce the computational burden
of the resulting problem because the parameter
mean time between failure (MTBF) becomes timeindependent in this case.

1
MTBF R(t )dt e dt

0
0
t

Component Reliability Calculation

A particular component has an of MTTF of 5000
hours. Considering a uniform failure rate, what is
component reliability for 200 hours?

5000

(per hour)

t = 200 hours

R(200) e

200
5000

0.96079 (or) 96.079%

Probability of failure = 1-0.9609 = 0.03921 (or) 3.921%

Elements of System Design

Characteristics of Product /
System Design
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Components----------------------Subsystems
Interrelated components
Boundary
Purpose
Environment
Interfaces
Input
Output
Constraints

System Reliability
Reliability of a process or system may be the
product of many different reliability terms, such
as
R (t ) R (t ) Component1 R (t ) Component 2 R (t ) Component 3 etc.

With the increase of number of essential

components in the system, the system reliability
will decrease and to achieve high system
reliability component reliability values should be
very high.

The Concept of Reliability

Structure
The logical arrangement of components that are
important for system reliability is called Reliability
Block Diagram (RBD). The systems can be made
up of either:
1) Series
2) Parallel, or
3) Mixed configurations.

Series Configuration

R (t ) R1 R2 R3 Rn

Parallel Configuration

R (t ) 1 1 R1 (1 R2 ) (1 R n )

Mixed Configuration

R (t ) R1 R2 1 (1 R3 )(1 R4 )(1 R5 ) R6

Logical and Physical

Configuration

The connectivity between equipment in RBD is

based on logic and may be quite different from the
actual physical configuration of the system.

Series - Parallel Structure for

Human Body
Vital Organs
are connected
in series

Cells in vital
organs are
connected in
parallel

Reliability Increasing
Techniques

One way of achieving high reliabilities is by

introducing redundant parts. For example we may
have two parts in parallel such that the system
operates if at least one part operates.
R(t) = 0.95
R(t) = 1-(1-0.95)(1-0.95) = 0.9975
By adding a redundant part we have increased the
reliability of system at time t from 0.95 to 0.9975

Hot Stand-by Vs. Cold Standby

We have been assuming that both parts are
operating whenever the system is on this is some
times called hot standby and is not always
practical.
We may need to provide a cold stand by where the
second part is switched into service when the first
one fails. Then we must also take into account the
reliability of the switch.
If the switching device is having reliability 0.98 at
time t we have the system reliability at time t as:
R(t) = 0.95 + (0.05)(0.98)(0.95) = 0.9966

Reliability Optimization
It is usually necessary to perform trade-off
calculations to determine the advisability of
parallel redundancy versus improvement of the
reliability of the basic subsystem by other means.

Some Basic Statistics on Space

Launches
USSR-3012 successful, 204 failed, 93.7% success rate
USA - 1457 successful, 153 failed, 90.5% success rate
EU

- 224 successful, 17 failed, 92.7% success rate

China - 199 successful, 17 failed, 92.1% success rate

Japan - 83 successful, 14 failed, 85.6% success rate
India - 33 successful, 10 failed, 76.1% success rate
Source: Claude Lafleur's Spacecraft Encyclopedia, 2015

Minimize the Number of Vital

Components
Decrease the number of component parts for a
system and believe in the vital few. For a
system that contains 5 items connected in
5
series the system 0reliability
.9 0.59 is :
On the other hand if there would have been
only three parts, the reliability of the system
would be :
3

0.9

0.73

Complicated Designs Tend

to Decrease Reliability

Best Desisgn is the Simple

Design
A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not
when there is no longer anything to add, but when
there is no longer anything to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost
simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find very
hard to pay.
-- Sir Antony Hoare

Parts Derating

Use derating to assure that stresses

applied to the parts are lower than the
stresses the parts can normally withstand.

Generally failures occur if Load exceeds

Strength

Other Reliability
Improvement Methods

Review the selection of any parts that are

relatively new and unproven.
Use standard parts.
Control the operating environment to provide
conditions that yield lower failure rates.
Specify replacement schedules to remove and
replace low-reliability parts before they reach
the wear-out stage.

Other Reliability Improvement

Methods
Prescribe screening tests to detect infantmortality
failures
and
to
eliminate
substandard components.
Conduct research and development to attain
an improvement in the basic reliability of
those components which contribute most of
the unreliability.

Automotive Reliability
The proportion of electronic components used in
motor vehicles has been increasing steeply in
recent years. In fact, many industry observers
expect electronic components to account for 40%
of total car production costs in the near future.
However there is a concern that the life of the
electronic components is relatively low thereby
affecting reliability.
Development of highly reliable, large-scale
software programs for microcomputer control has
become a crucial matter for the automakers.

Need for
tellsSynchronization
of Henry Fords buying scrapped

A story
Ford
cars
and
having
his
engineers
disassemble them to see which parts failed
and which were still in good shape. Engineers
assumed this was done to find the weak parts
and make them stronger.
Ford explained that he wanted to find the
parts that were still in good shape. The
company could save money if they redesigned
these parts to fail at the same time as the
others.

Availability
Availability is the ratio of time a system or
component is functional to the total time it is
required or expected to function.

MTBF
Availabili ty
MTBF MTTR

Reliability and Safety

Design for X tools

Design for Manufacture and
Assembly
Design for Reliability
Design for Maintainability
Design for Serviceability
Design for the Environment

Concept of Energy
Productivity
Outputs
Productivity =
Inputs
Outputs
Energy Productivity
EnergyInput
=

Minimizing Energy
Consumption at the Cost of
Reliability ?

Google's Redundancy
Approach Towards
Reliability

A server room in Council Bluffs, Lowa

A Measure of Google's Energy

Consumption
Google used 2.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity
last year, about the same as what 200,000 U.S.
homes would use in a year that is equivalent to
one quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant the New York Times reports.
One Google search is equal to turning on a 60W
light bulb for 17 seconds.
For every kilowatt-hour used for computing in a
typical data center, nearly a whole additional
kilowatt-hour is used for running cooling systems.

Considerable Energy Used for Cooling

Systems

A central cooling plant in Googles Douglas County, Georgia, data center

After all Reliability is a Probability

!!!

Thank You..