Reliability Engineering

ENGI – 8670
Assignment – 4
Faisal I Khan
fikhan@mun.ca
IIC 1008 Ext 8939

• Last date of Assignment submission: 17 February, 2017

1. A power supply consists of three rectifires in series. Each rectifier has a Weibull
failure didtribution with  eqaul to 2.1. However they have different
characteristics lifetimes given by 12,000 hr, 18,500 hr and 21,500 hr. Find the
MTTF and the design life of the power supply corresponding to a reliability of
0.90.

2. A system has two failure modes. One failure mode due to external conditions, has
a constant failure rate of 0.07 failure per year. The second attributed to wearout,
has a Weibull distribution with a characteristics life of 10 year and a shape
parameter of 1.8. Determine the system reliability for a design life of 1 year. Find
by trial and error the median time of failure.

3. The wearout of a machine part is normally distributed with 90 percent of the

failures occurring between 200 and 270 hr of use (i.e., 5 % below 200 hr and 5%
above 270 hr.)

a) Find the MTTF and the standard deviation of failure times.

b) What is the reliability if the part is to be used for 210 hr and then
replaced?
c) Determine the design life if no more than 1 percent probability of failure
prior to the replacement to be tolerated?
d) Compute the reliability for a 10-hr use if the part has been operating for
200 hr (i.e., find the conditional reliability).

4. A complex machine has a high number of failures. The time to failure was found
to be lognormal with s = 1.25. Specifications call for a reliability of 0.95 at 1000
cycles.
a) Determine the median time to failure that must be achieved by engineering
modifications to meet the specifications. Assume the design changes do
not affect the shape parameter s.
b) What is the corresponding MTTF and standard deviation?
c) If the desired median time of the failure is obtained, what is the reliability
during the next 1000 cycles given it has operated for 1000 cycles?
5. A rotor used in an AC motor manufactured by the Toole N. Di Company has a
time to failure that is lognormal with an MTTF found to be 3600 operating hours
and a shape parameter s equal to 2.
a) Current preventive maintenance practices require the rotor to be replaced
every 100 operating hours. Determine the probability that a rotor will
survive the 100 hr.
b) If at the end of the 100 operating hours the maintenance departments
neglects to replace the rotor, what is the probability that it will survive
until the next scheduled replacement (assume that it has not failed at 100
hr)?
c) If the rotor is still operating after 200 hr, should it be replaced?
d) From the above analysis, what can you say about the hazard rate and the
preventive maintenance policy?