Basic Reliability Concepts

Lecture one
• What is reliability
• Why study Reliability (Importance of
Reliability)
• Explanation of some basic terms

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 1.1 What is reliability?
• Reliability is a design engineering discipline
which applies scientific knowledge to assure
a product will perform its intended function for
the required duration within a given
environment.
• This includes designing in the ability to
maintain, test, and support the product
throughout its total life cycle.
• Reliability is best described as product
performance over time.
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 What is reliability? Contd.
This is accomplished concurrently with other
design disciplines by contributing to the
selection of the
system architecture,
materials,
processes, and
components -- both software and
hardware;
followed by verifying the selections made
by
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thorough analysis and test. 3
 Reliability Definitions

Reliability is the ability of a an item to perform a

required function, under given
environmental and operational conditions
and for a stated period of time
Reliability can be defined as the probability that
an item will continue to perform its intended
function without failure for a specified period
of time under stated conditions.

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1.2 Why is the study of Reliability
Important?
Reasons why product or system reliability is
important to an Engineer.
1) Reputation.
 A company's reputation is very closely
related to the reliability of their products.
The more reliable a product is, the more
likely the company is to have a favorable
reputation.
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 2) Customer Satisfaction.
 While a reliable product may not
dramatically affect customer satisfaction in
a positive manner, an unreliable product
will negatively affect customer satisfaction
severely. Thus high reliability is a
mandatory requirement for customer
satisfaction.

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 3) Warranty Costs.

Replacement and repair costs will
negatively affect profits.

It will gain unwanted negative attention.

Introducing reliability analyses is an
important step in taking corrective action.

It will lead to a product that is more
reliable.

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 4) Repeat Business.
 A deliberate effort towards improved
reliability shows existing customers that a
manufacturer is serious about their
product, and committed to customer
satisfaction.
 This type of attitude has a positive impact
on future business.

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 5) Cost Analysis.
 Manufacturers may take reliability data
and combine it with other cost information
to illustrate the cost-effectiveness of their
products.
 This cost analysis can prove that although
the initial cost of their product might be
higher, the overall lifetime cost is lower.
 Because their product requires fewer
repairs or less maintenance.
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 6) Customer Requirements
 Many customers in today's market
demand that their suppliers have an
effective reliability program.
 Why? They have learned the benefits of
reliability analysis from experience.

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 7) Competitive Advantage
 Many companies will publish their
predicted reliability numbers to help gain
an advantage over their competitors who
either does not publish their numbers or
has lower numbers.

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 Who Gains From Good
Reliability?
Manufacturer - because his product has
additional customer appeal, through higher
quality, faster service, lower support cost.
The Customer - because the equipment
he buys is easier and less costly to
support, has lower down-time - higher
availability.

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 Reliability-related costs
Reliability-related costs are all those costs
resulting from product field failures or
perceived failures from the time of
shipment over the life of the product.
They include warranty costs and
The opportunity cost of lost customers.

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 What must be done to have
reliable products?
The following are the major elements required:
The culture at your company must give its
proper importance to reliability. This may
require painful compromises in some areas.
Quantitative assessments of Product.
Reliability must focus on the identification and
timely elimination of design and processing
deficiencies that degrade product
performance and operating life expectancy.
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 Contd.
Communication channels with your customers must
be open and formalized to capture their detailed
comments related to product failures.
A well-conceived failure database of product field
failure modes supported by failure analysis of the
root cause is fundamental to corrective action and
improvement.
Reliability must be designed into products and be
included in all aspects of product life cycle.

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 Contd.
Formal product development processes and
good project management practices are
required.
Your procurement group must drive supplier
quality and reliability through partnering.
Manufacturing has to use modern quality
control methods to ensure that components
and products are produced according to
specification with negligible variation.

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 Goal of reliability engineering
• To evaluate the inherent reliability of a
product or process and pinpoint potential
areas for reliability improvement
• Realistically, all failures cannot be
eliminated from a design
• To identify the most likely failures and then
identify appropriate actions to mitigate the
effects of those failures.
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 1.3 Explanation of some basic
terms.
1) A component
A component or an item is defined as a
part, sub-system, or equipment which
can be individually considered and
separately tested.

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 2) Mean life:
The average life of the total numbers (no)
of components put on test or service,
measured over the entire life curve.

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 3) Failure
 Inability of a component or system to perform its
intended function for a specified time under
specified environmental and operational
conditions.
 Every item has its own operational
characteristics which it must possess and exhibit
in the course of its use
 A deviation in the characteristics under working
condition is considered as a fault.
 A state of fault is regarded as a ‘failure’.

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 Failure contd.
An item is considered to have failed under any of
the following three conditions:
 When it becomes completely inoperative.
 When it is still operative but unable to perform
any longer the required function. (e.g. an electric
motor now rotating at a speed lower than
normal).
 When it becomes unsafe for its continued use.
(e.g., if an electric item produces a shocking
effect on users)

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 4) Reliability:
This is the characteristic of an item expressed as the probability that
it will perform a required function under stated period of time when
used under stated operating conditions.

In any definition of reliability, the three operative phrases

“PERFORM A REQUIRED FUNCTION”, “UNDER STATED
CONDITION”, “FOR A STATED PERIOD OF TIME”, are
always emphasized.

Based on mathematical reasons, reliability lies between 0 and 1.

Reliability = 1.00 means the item will always work as intended.
Reliability = 0.9 means 90 per cent likely to work as intended
Reliability = 0.00 means absolutely certain it will not work as
intended.
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 5) Failure Rate:
 The number of failure occurring per unit time is known as
the failure rate.
 Failure rate  is normally defined by a mathematical
t
relation,
1 N f 1 dN f
t  lim t  0 x  x ................................. 1. 2
N S t NS dt

Where Ns = number of surviving items after a life test.

Nf = Number of failed item during the time interval

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 Example 1
• 10 items have failed, out of 1010 put on
test during a period of 5000 hours.
Calculate the failure rate.

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 Solution
• Using equation (1.2)
1 10
 x
1000 5000
 2 x 10  6 failures per hour.
10 1
percentage failure rate  x x 100
1000 5000
 0.0002 per cent / hour.

• Note (1) Failure rate is most commonly

expressed as a percentage per 1000
hours. The above answer would then be
0.2 percent/103 hours.
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 Failure rate of some components
Capacitor (fixed paper type) 0.1 (% per 10 3 hours.)
Resistor (carbon film type) 0.05 - do
Diode (silicon / watt) 0.005 - do
–
Thermistor 0.06 - do
Triode valve 1.8 - do
Transformer (r.f type) 0.03 - do

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 Where such information could be
obtained
 Knowledge of numerical failure rate value of
Elect./Electro. Components is very vital for the
computation of system reliability.
 Such information could be obtained in the
following areas:
 Standard part supplier report.
 Failure report (from users)
 Testing agency report
 Field failure report.
 Quality control department report
 Maintenance records.

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 Conditions that affect component
failure rate.
Components failure rate are affected by the
following:
 Mechanical environment
 Electrical environment and
 Thermal environments
 They are expected to operate under these
conditions.
 Shock and vibration have relatively small effect
on electronic component with small size.
 multiplying coefficients are introduced to account
for these effects.
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 Conditions that affect component
failure rate contd.
• These effects are represented by the
multiplying coefficients WE,WT,WR known as
weighting factors due to
• Environment,
• Temperature and
• Rating respectively.
• For equipment operating under unfavorable
condition, weighting factor is greater than unity.
(> 1)
• For favorable condition the weighting factor is
less than or equal to unity.(≤ 1)
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 Conditions that affect component
failure rate contd.
• Therefore, the overall failure rate of each
component in equipment can be obtained as

0   nWEWT WR
Where   basic failure rate
n  quantity or number of the component in the equipment'
WE Weighting factor due to environment (min us temperature)
WR Weighting factor due to rating
WT Weighting factor due to temperature
WE , WR , WT are normally given in numerical figures.

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 Conditions that affect component
failure rate contd.
• Total failure rates for equipment can be
obtained by adding up the overall failure
rates contributed by all individual
components in the equipment i.e

T 01  02  03  .....  0 n

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 Example 2
components Nos. t
An electronic system used % per
works for 24 hours
103
daily and continuously
hrs.
for 50 days. The
t
following components Transistors 30 0.08
listed in table are Diodes 4 0.05
used for its Capacitors 100 0.01
construction Resistors 140 0.05
Connections 700 0.001

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 Example 2 contd.
• Weighting factors RATING
Environment (all
components) 2.0 Capacitors 3.0
Temperature (all
components) 1.5 Resistors 2.0

Transistors 2.0

Diodes 1.5

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 Contd.
Construct a table showing all the data
given and hence calculate
a) the overall failure rate of each
component.
b) The system failure rate.
c) The system reliability.

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 6) Mean time to failure (MTTF):
• This is the sum of the survival time for all of the
components divided by the number of failures.
• MTTF are used for parts that are not repairable e.g.
• light bulbs,
• transistors,
• bearing,
• resistors and
• capacitors or
• systems containing many parts, like a printed circuit
board.
• When a part fails in a non-repairable system, the system
fails; therefore system reliability is a function of the first
part failure.

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 Mean time to failure (MTTF)
contd.
• MTTF can be computed after testing a
number of items, N in a specified way
until all have failed. If the time to failure
are (t1, t2, t3, tn) then the observed MTTF
is given by,

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 Mean time to failure (MTTF)
contd.
• Given by
N

t  t i 0
MTTF  i
N
 t1  t0  t 2  t0  ....  t n  t0 / N ................................ 1 .3
Where t0  starting ( reference time )
t1  t0   period to 1st failure
t2  t0   period to 2 nd failure
tn  t0   period to N th failure
N  total number of failed components.

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 Example 3
• Life testing is made on six (non-repairable)
electrical lamps and the following results were
obtained as shown in the table below. Calculate
the MTTF.

Failure 0 1 1 1 1 2

Times(100Hrs) t0=0 t1=4 t2=10 t3=16 t4=20 t5=23

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 Mean time between failures
(MTBF):
• This is a basic measure of system reliability.
• It is represented in units of hours.
• The higher the MTBF number is, the higher the
reliability of the product
• It is applicable to repairable items.
• MTBF can be defined as the mean value of the
length of time which elapses between failures
• Its computation is based on two main types of
test known as
• Replacement and
• Non- replacement methods.
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 By replacement method,
• The MTBF, m, of a system may be measured by
testing it for a total period of time t n
• Let to = start time for the test and
• tn = time for the nth failure during which n
faults or failures occur.
Each fault if repaired and the equipment put back
on test, the repair time being excluded from the
total
T
test time T, the observed MTBF is given by
m
n
where m = MTBF
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 By replacement method contd.
• If to = 0 is the reference
starting time where (t1  t0 )  (t 2  t1 )  ....  (t n  t n  1 )
m
• n = number of failures n
t n  t0 tn
to = start time for the test   1. 3
n n
t1 = time for the 1st failure
t2 = time to 2nd failure
tn = time to nth failure

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 Example 4
• Continuous tests were conducted on electrical
items and faults which were repaired immediately
occurred at the following times as shown in the
table below. Calculate the mean time between
failures (MTBF).

Failures 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

Time to=0 t1=2 t2=4 t3=8 t4=10 t5=14 t6=15

(x100hrs)
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 Non-replacement
• This method requires that a large number of the
items be put under test and observations made
for possible failure at the beginning and at the
end of the test period.
• It has been demonstrated by Epstein that the
best estimate of MTBF, m, for non-replacement
test is given by
test hours for failures  test hours for survivors
m 
number of failures
That is
total component test hours survivors hours 
m 
total number of failures.
The m obtained by this method is only an estimate.
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 Example5
• In order to determine the MTBF of a certain
component, 50 were tested for a period lasting for
200 hours. The time to failure of the component
are shown in table below, 35 components
survived without failure. Assuming that wear out
failure can be ignored, calculate (i) the total test
hours before failure (ii) total test hours without
failure (iii) total survival hours (iv) MTBF
Number of components 6 5 4

Time to failures hours) 100 140 175

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 OBSERVATIONS
• A test lasting only 200 hours was used to obtain
an estimate of 600 hours as the MTBF.
• Another way of expressing MTBF is through
failure rate, which is the number of faults per unit
time. If the failure rate is approximately constant
in value as in the case with many electronics
systems, then MTBF is the reciprocal of failure
rate, that is 1
m  MTBF 

• M is usually expressed in hours and is faults per
hour.

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