DESIGN FOR RELIABILITY

Dr. Ir. Muhammad Sabri

DESIGN FOR RELIABILITY

The design strategy used to ensure reliability.

The fail-safe approach is to identify the weak spot in
the system or component and provide some way to
monitor that weakness. When the weak link fails, it is
replaced, just as the fuse in a household electrical
system is replaced.
At the other extreme is what can be termed "the onehorse shay" approach. The objective is to design all
components to have equal life so the system will fall
apart at the end of its useful lifetime just as the
legendary one-horse shay did.
Frequently an absolute worst-case approach is used;
in it the worst combination of parameters is identified
and the design is based on the premise that all can go
wrong at the same time. This is a very conservative
approach, and it often leads to overdesign.

DESIGN FOR RELIABILITY

Two major areas of engineering activity determine the

reliability of an engineering system.
First, provision for reliability must be established during
the design concept stage, carried through the detailed
design development, and maintained during the many
steps in manufacture.
Once the system becomes operational, it is imperative that
provision be made for its continued maintenance during its
service."
The steps in building reliability into a design are shown in
Figure 1.
The process starts at the beginning of conceptual design by
clearly laying out the criteria for the success of the design,
estimating the required reliability, the duty cycle, and
carefully considering all of the factors that make up the
service environment.

In the configuration step of embodiment design the physical

arrangement of components can critically affect reliability. In laying
out functional block diagrams, consider those areas that strongly
influence reliability, and prepare a list of parts in each block.
This is the place to consider various redundancies and to be sure that
physical arrangement allows good access for maintenance. In the
parametric step of embodiment design, select components with high
reliability. Build and test both computer and physical prototypes.
These should be subjected to the widest range of environmental
conditions. Establish failure modes and estimate the system and
subsystem MTBF. Detail design is the place for the final revision of
specifications, for building and testing the preproduction prototype,
and the preparation of the final production drawings. Once the design
is released to the production organization the design organization is
not finished with it. Production models are given further
environmental tests, and these help establish the quality assurance
program and the maintenance schedules. When the product is put
into service with customers, there is a steady feedback concerning
field failures and MTBFs that helps in redesign efforts and follow-on
products.

CAUSES OF UNRELIABILITY
The malfunctions that an engineering system can
experience can be classified into five general
categories.
Design mistakes:
Among the common design errors are failure to
include all important:
ooperating factors
oincomplete information on loads
oenvironmental conditions
oerroneous calculations
opoor selection of materials.

CAUSES OF UNRELIABILITY
Manufacturing defects:
Although the design may be free from error,
defects introduced at some stage in
manufacturing may degrade it.
Some common examples are
Poor surface finish or sharp edges (burrs) that
lead to fatigue cracks
Decarburization or quench cracks in heat-treated
steel.

CAUSES OF UNRELIABILITY
Elimination of defects in manufacturing
Responsibility of the manufacturing engineering
staff
Also involved R&D function is sometimes
required to achieve it.
Manufacturing errors
lack of proper instructions or specifications
insufficient supervision
poor working environment
unrealistic production quota
inadequate training
poor motivation.

CAUSES OF UNRELIABILITY
Maintenance:
Most engineering systems are designed on the
assumption they will receive adequate
maintenance at specified periods.
Neglected or is improperly maintenance, service
life will suffer. Since many consumer products do
not receive proper maintenance by their owners,
a good design strategy is to design products that
do not require maintenance.

CAUSES OF UNRELIABILITY

Exceeding design limits:

If the operator exceeds the limits of temperature,
speed, or another variable for which it was designed,
the equipment is likely to fail.
Environmental factors:
Subjecting equipment to environmental conditions for
which it was not designed, such as rain, high
humidity, and ice, usually greatly shortens its service
life.
A variety of methods are used in engineering design
practice to improve reliability.
a probability of failure of PI < 10- 6 for structural
applications and 10- 4 <PI < 10- 3 for unstressed
applications.

MARGIN OF SAFETY
The variability in the strength properties of
materials and in loading conditions (stress) leads
to a situation in which the overlapping statistical
distributions can result in failures.
The variability in strength of materials has a
major impact on the probability of failure, so
failure can be reduced with no change in the
mean value if the variability of the strength can
be reduced.

MARGIN OF SAFETY
Derating
The analogy to using a factor of safety in
structural design is derating electrical, electronic,
and mechanical equipment. The reliability of
such equipment is increased if the maximum
operating conditions (power, temperature, etc.)
are derated below their name plate values. As the
load factor of equipment is reduced, so is the
failure rate. Conversely, when equipment is
operated in excess of rated conditions, failure will
ensue rapidly.

MARGIN OF SAFETY

Redundancy
One of the most effective ways to increase reliability is with
redundancy. In parallel redundant designs the same
system functions are performed at the same time by two or
more components even though the combined outputs are
not required. The existence of parallel paths may result in
load sharing so that each component is derated and has its
life increased by a longer-than-normal time.
Another method of increasing redundancy is to have
inoperative or idling standby units that cut in and take
over when an operating unit fails. The standby unit wears
out much more slowly than the operating unit does.
Therefore, the operating strategy often is to alternate units
between full-load and standby service. The standby unit
must be provided with sensors to detect the failure and
switching gear to place it in service. The sensor and/or
switching units frequently are the weak link in a standby
redundant system.

MARGIN OF SAFETY
Durability
The material selection and design details should
be performed with the objective of producing a
system that is resistant to degradation from such
factors as corrosion, erosion, foreign object
damage, fatigue, and wear." This usually
requires the decision to spend more money on
high-performance materials so as to increase
service life and reduce maintenance costs. Life
cycle costing is the technique used to justify this
type of decision.

DAMAGE TOLERANCE
Crack detection and propagation have taken on
great importance since the development of the
fracture mechanics approach to design .
A damage-tolerant material or structure is one in
which a crack, when it occurs, will be detected
soon enough after its occurrence so that the
probability of encountering loads in excess of the
residual strength is very remote.

DAMAGE TOLERANCE
Figure 2 illustrates some of the concepts of
damage tolerance. The initial population of very
small flaws inherent in the material is shown at
the far left. These are small cracks, inclusions,
porosity, surface pits, and scratches. If they are
less than a1 they will not grow appreciably in
service.
Additional defects will be introduced by
manufacturing processes. Those larger than a2
will be detected by inspection and eliminated as
scrapped parts.

DAMAGE TOLERANCE
However, some cracks will be present in the
components put into service, and they will grow
to a size a3 that can be detected by the
nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques that
can be used in service. The allowable design
stresses must be so selected that the number of
flaws of
size a3 or greater will be small. Moreover, the
material should be damage-tolerant so that
propagation to the critical crack size a is slow.
In conventional fracture mechanics analysis, the
critical crack size is set at the largest crack size
that might be undetected by the NDE technique
used in service

critical

DAMAGE TOLERANCE

The value of fracture toughness of the material is

taken as the minimum reasonable value. This is
a safe but overly conservative approach. These
worst-case assumptions can be relaxed and the
analysis based on more realistic conditions by
using probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM)

DAMAGE TOLERANCE

Distribution of defects in engineering components.

MINIMIZING FAILURE

Ease of Inspection
The importance of detecting cracks should be
apparent from Figure 2. Ideally it should be possible
to employ visual methods of crack detection, but
special design features may have to be provided in
order to do so.
In critically stressed structures, special features to
permit reliable NDE by ultrasonic's or eddy current
techniques may be required. If the structure is not
capable of ready inspection, then the stress level must
be lowered until the initial crack cannot grow to a
critical size during the life of the structure. For that
situation the inspection costs will be low but the
structure will carry a weight penalty because of the
low stress level.

MINIMIZING FAILURE
Simplicity
Simplification of components and assemblies
reduces the chance for error and increases the
reliability.
The components that can be adjusted by
operation or maintenance personnel should be
restricted to the absolute minimum. The simpler
the equipment needed to meet the performance
requirements the better the design.

RELIABILITY OF DESIGN

Specificity
The greater the degree of specificity, the greater the
inherent reliability of design.
Whenever possible, be specific with regard to material
characteristics, sources of supply, tolerances and
characteristics of the manufacturing process, tests
required for qualification of materials and
components, and procedures for installation,
maintenance, and use. Specifying standard items
increases reliability. It usually means that the
materials and components have a history of use so
that their reliability is known.
Also, replacement items will be readily available.
When it is necessary to use a component with a high
failure rate, the design should especially provide for
the easy replacement of that component.

RELIABILITY OF DESIGN

Sources of Reliability Data

Data on the reliability of a product clearly is highly
proprietary to its manufacturer.
However, the U.S. defence and space programs have
created a strong interest in reliability, and this has
resulted in the compilation of a large amount of data
on failure rates and failure modes. The Reliability
Information Analysis Centre (RIAC)30, sponsored by
the DOD Defence Information Analysis Centre, has
for many years collected failure data on electronic
components. Extensive reliability data on electronic
components is available online, for a fee, in 217 Plus,
the successor to MIL-HDBK-217. Reliability data on
non electronic components is available on compact
disk NPRD-95. Information on European sources of
reliability data can be found in the book by Moss.

RELIABILITY OF DESIGN

Cost of Reliability
Reliability costs money, but the cost nearly always is less than the
cost of unreliability.
The cost of reliability comes from the extra costs associated with
designing and producing more reliable components, testing for
reliability, and training and maintaining a reliability organization.
Figure 3 shows the cost to a manufacturer of increasing the reliability
of a product.
The costs of design and manufacture increase with product reliability.
Moreover, the slope of the curve increases, and each incremental
increase in reliability becomes harder to achieve.
The costs of the product after delivery to the customer, chiefly
warranty or replacement costs and reputation of the supplier,
decrease with increasing reliability.
The summation of these two curves produces the total cost curve,
which has a minimum at an optimum level of reliability.
Other types of analyses establish the optimum schedule for part
replacement to minimize cost.

RELIABILITY OF DESIGN

Influence of reliability on cost.