Reliablity properties

Failure rate
Definition of Failure rate:

is the frequency with which an engineered

system or component fails, expressed in failures
per unit of time. It is often used in reliability
engineering.

The failure rate of a system usually depends on time,

with the rate varying over the life cycle of the system.
Sometimes physical considerations of the failure mechanism may lead to a
specific distribution but more often, the choice is made on the basis of how
well the actual observations of times to failure appear to be fitted by the
distribution.

In reliability studies a useful tool for reducing the range of possible candidates
is provided by the shape and monotonicity of the failure rate function since it
reflects some of the characteristics of the mechanism leading to conclusion of
life.
We start by looking at the length of use of a system or component prior
to failure (the age prior to failure) and from this develop a definition of
reliability.

Lifetime distributions are functions of time and may be expressed as

probability density functions and so we may write :

This represents the probability that the system or component fails anywhere
between 0 and t.

The probability that a system or component will fail only after time t may be written as :

The function R(t) is usually called the reliability function.

hazard function or conditional failure rate function which gives
the probability that a system or component fails after it has
been in use for a given time. This function may be defined as :

A graph of H (t) often shows a high initial failure rate followed by a period of relative reliability followed by a
period of increasingly high failure rates as a system or component ages. A typical graph (sometimes called a
bathtub graph) is shown below:

Note that 'early life and random failure' includes failure due to defects being present and that 'end of life and
random failure' includes failure due to ageing.
 The reliability of a system or component may be
defined as the probability that the system or
component functions for a given time, that is, the
probability that it will fail only after the given time.
Put another way, R(t) is the probability that the
system or component is still functioning at time t.
The exponential distribution

We have already met the exponential distribution in the form:

However, one of the simplest distributions describing failure is the

exponential distribution

where, in this case, is the mean time to failure. One property of this
distribution is that the hazard function is a constant independent of
time - the 'good as new' syndrome mentioned above.
To show that the probability of failure is independent of age consider the following.
 Example1:

The lifetime of a modern low-wattage electronic light bulb is known to be exponentially distributed
with a mean of 8000 hours. Find the proportion of bulbs that may be expected to fail before 7000
hours use
The mean time to failure (MTTF) is defined by

which is the mean, or expected value, of the probability distribution defined by f (t).

also be shown (Appendix 2A) that

Equation (2.8) is often easier to apply than (2.7).

 The mean of the failure distribution is only one of several measures of central tendency of the
failure distribution. Another is the median time to failure, defined by:

The median divides the distribution into two halves, with 50 percent of the failures occurring
before the median time to failure and 50 percent occurring after the median. The median may be
preferred to the mean when the distribution is highly skewed.
A third frequently used average is the mode, or most likely observed failure time, defined by :

FIGURE2.2
Comparison of the measures of central tendency.
Example 2 :
Consider the probability density function

With t in hours .Then

And

To find the median time to failure, set

Then solving for

Mean residual life(remaining)
Definition of Mean residual life (MRL):

representing how much longer components will work for from a

certain point of time, is an important measure in reliability
analysis and modeling.
 Suppose T is a continuous non-negative random variable with cumulative
distribution function (CDF) F(t) , probability density function (PDF) f (t) , and
reliability function R(t) =1− F(t). Define the residual life random variable at age
t by Tt = T − t |T > t, If E[T] < ∞ , then the MRL function exists and is defined as
the expectation of the residual life.

Current Condition
Performance

Serviceable
Threshold
Value
Unserviceable
Remaining Service Life

Now Time (years)

 MRL of series system:

Let T1:n , T2:n ,..., Tn:n be ordered lifetimes of n components. As a

series system is defined as a system which functions if and only
if all components function, then its lifetime can be represented
by the first ordered statistic T1:n .

So the reliability function of the series system, denoted by RS(t) , is:

The MRL function, denoted by MS(t) is given by:
MRL of parallel system:

A parallel system is a collection of components which works if and only if

at least one component works, which is Tn:n .

Thus, the corresponding reliability function, denoted by RP(t) , is:

The related MRL function of parallel systems, denoted by M P (t) , is represented by:
Example:
Suppose that the lifetime of each component follows the modified Weibull
distribution with the reliability function R(t) = exp(−t0.25et ) .

The corresponding MRL function for components is of upside-down bathtub shape, we

obtain the MRL for series systems MS(t), the MRL for parallel systems M P (t):
Reliability (survival) function
Definition of survival function :

Survival Function is a function which helps us to know that

whether or not an object of interest is going to survive beyond the
specified time. This object of interest can be a patient, a machine or
anything else.
 Examples :

• How long a person lives after surgery

• How long a woman undergoing fertility treatments takes to get pregnant.

• Time until tumor recurrence.

• Time until a machine part fail.

 The Survival fonction Is:

S(t) = Pr(T > t) = 1 - F(t)

T denotes the response variable, T ≥ 0.

Here are some basic properties of S(t):

S(0) = 1 and S(∞) = 0.
S(t) is a non-increasing function.
Types of survival functions:

Survival functions are mainly divided into two categories:

1) parametric survival functions.

2) non-parametric survival functions.

1) parametric survival functions.

A. Exponential survival function: B. Weibull survival function:

Example :
Example:
2) non-parametric survival functions:

Kaplan-Meier estimator
References
Failure rate :
-Reliability and Quality Control, HELM (2008)
- Failure Distrbution
-A lifetime distribution with decreasing failure rate
Mean residual life (remaining):
- reliability modeling and analysis with mean residual life , shen yan , 2009
-fundamentals of asset management
-representing the mean residual life in terms of failure rate , R.C.gupta and
D.M.Bradley, 2003
Reliability (survival) function :
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_function
- https://towardsdatascience.com/survival-functions-101-bd57fb8be888
- http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~madigan/W2025/notes/survival.pdf
 Students :

-Sara AlSaleh
-Alhanouf althunayan
-Hilah aljurayyan
-Albandari alshudukhi
-Asma Aldayan
-Sara Alrashed
-Khawlah AlSanad