Lecture 1: Course Overview and Basics of Reliability

Lecture #1
Outline

• Motivation

• Course Overview
• Reliability-based Design
• Prognostics and Health Management

• Basics of Reliability
• Time-Independent Reliability
• Time-Dependent Reliability

• Types of Uncertainty

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 Motivation

Galaxy Note 7 fire/exploding due to Li-ion battery design defect

August-October 2016
Consequence: Over 35 injured, over $17 billion loss

787 Dreamliner fire due to Li-ion battery manufacturing defect*

Japan Airlines (JAL) in Boston, January 2013
Consequence: Over $1.1 million daily loss due to groundings

UPS flight fire due to overheated Li-ion battery*

February 2006
Consequence: 3 injured, loss of whole airplane

* The root cause is likely but not conclusive

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 Motivation

Engineering Questions:
Q1. Is it possible to design an engineered system with
near-zero failure probability?

Q2. Is it possible to anticipate and prevent failures

during system operation?

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 Course Overview

Prognostics and Health Management (PHM)

Sensing Diagnostics Prognostics
Fault 2 Fault 1 Prediction at 120 cycles
Prediction at 80 cycles

Probability
+ ++ ++

Feature 2
Reliability- Prediction at 40

density
cycles
+ ++ +
Based Design +

Healthy
20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Feature 1 Remaining Useful Life

Battery and Bearing Prognostics

Optimized
Probability

Limit
density

Initial

Lithium-Ion Battery Turbine Gearbox

Fatigue Life
40% 60%

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 Reliability-Based Design

Design of Vehicle Control Arm (US Army): Methodology

Deterministic
Optimum
1st hotspot
[Life at 1st hotspot=Limit]
Failure Surface G1 = 0
X2: (thickness of

Initial
Design 2nd hotspot
comp. 2)−1

[Lives at both hotspots > Limit]

Safe Region
0 X1: (thickness of
comp. 1)−1 Failure Surface G2 = 0
[Life at 2nd hotspot=Limit]

Hu C., and Youn B.D., “Adaptive-Sparse Polynomial Chaos Expansion for Reliability Analysis and Design of Complex Engineering
Systems,” Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, v43, n3, p419‒442, 2011.
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 Reliability-Based Design

Design of Vehicle Control Arm (US Army): Methodology

1st hotspot
[Life at 1st hotspot=Limit]
Failure Surface G1 = 0
X2: (thickness of

2nd hotspot
comp. 2)−1

[Lives at both hotspots ≥ Limit]

Safe Region
Weight
0 X1: (thickness of
comp. 1)−1 Failure Surface G2 = 0 Reliability
[Life at 2nd hotspot=Limit]

Hu C., and Youn B.D., “Adaptive-Sparse Polynomial Chaos Expansion for Reliability Analysis and Design of Complex Engineering
Systems,” Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, v43, n3, p419‒442, 2011.
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 Reliability-Based Design

Group Discussion (5 Min): How to Formulate this Design Problem?

Find design variables d = μ(X)

To minimize the design cost C(d)
Subject to
Reliability at the first hot spot R1(X; d) ≥ Rreq
Reliability at the second hot spot R2(X; d) ≥ Rreq
Other requirements (constraints)

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 Definition of Reliability

Formal Definition of Reliability

 The probability of a system or component to perform its required
functions under stated conditions (for a specified period of time).

Time-Independent Reliability (Design)

 Typically used at the early design stage and does not consider
time-dependent degradation that occurs during system
operation.

Time-Dependent Reliability (Operation)

 Often used to represent the reliability of a system during
operation and takes into account degradation.

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 Example of Time-Independent Reliability

Example Description
 Consider a performance function G as the difference between the
strength S of and load L on an engineered system
G = L−S
where S and L are random variables and follow normal
distributions with probability density functions fS and fL.
Probability density

fS

fL

μL μS L,S
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 Example of Time-Independent Reliability

Definition of Reliability
 A failure will occur when the strength S is less than the load L, or
G > 0. Hence G > 0 indicates a failure.
 The probability of failure can therefore be defined by
R = Pr ( G > 0 )
Since S and L follow normal distributions, G (= L – S) is normal.

G≤0 Probability density G>0

Safe region Failure region

R = Φ (β ) Pf = 1 − R
βσG

μG 0 G=L‒S 11
 Example of Time-Independent Reliability

Group Discussion (5 Min): Which Design is the Most Reliable?

Design 1

Probability density
G≤0 G>0
Safe region Failure region Reduced
σG
uncertainty
Design 3
Design 2
Design 2 Improved mean
μG
performance
Design 1
Design 3

0 G=L‒S

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 Types of Uncertainty

Aleatory uncertainty (objective uncertainty)

 Describes inherent variation associated with a system or its
operating environment and arises from variations in material
properties, dimensional tolerances, loading conditions, etc.
 Arises from natural variability and is thus irreducible.
 Often modeled as random variables whose values are in an
established range but vary from unit to unit or from time to time.

Epistemic uncertainty (subjective uncertainty)

 Arises primarily from the lack of information or knowledge of
some characteristics of the system or environment.
 The degree of uncertainty can be reduced if more data are
collected or more knowledge is acquired.

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 Types of Uncertainty

Aleatory uncertainty (objective uncertainty)

>> thickness_a = normrnd(1,0.05,100000,5);

>> mean(thickness_a)

ans =

1.0001 1.0002 0.9999 1.0002 1.0000

>> std(thickness_a)

ans =

0.0499 0.0500 0.0500 0.0501 0.0500

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 Types of Uncertainty

Epistemic uncertainty (subjective uncertainty)

>> thickness_a = normrnd(1,0.05,10,5);

>> mean(thickness_a)

ans =

0.9982 1.0274 1.0352 1.0130 0.9862

>> std(thickness_a)

ans =

0.0410 0.0310 0.0539 0.0370 0.0602

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 Example of Time-Dependent Reliability

Lithium-Ion Battery Structure

Metal
particle

Photo credit: www.anandtech.com

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 Class Flow

Introduce class outline 3 min

Discuss motivation 5 min

Group discussion on Overview reliability-based

15 min
design formulation design and prognostics

Define reliability 5 min

Video on random
variable Discuss example on time-
20 min
Group discussion on independent reliability
design option
Discuss types of uncertainty
10 min
(if time allows)

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