Khulna University of Engineering & Technology

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Course No: EE 4217

Course Title: Power Plant Engineering
Credit: 3.00

Reliability Engineering

Presented By
Protik Chandra Biswas
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Khulna University of Engineering & Technology,
Khulna-9203, Bangladesh
 Syllabus

Reliability Concepts

Failure rate, outage, mean time of failure, series and parallel systems
and redundancy, reliability evaluation techniques

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

➢ Reliability study is considered essential for proper utilization and maintenance of engineering systems and
equipments.
➢ It makes possible more effective use of resources and results in an increase in productivity and decrease in wastage
of money, material and manpower.
➢ Reliability studies of high risk systems like chemical projects, nuclear reactors, space missions, aircraft systems are
a must to minimize the risk of failure of such systems.
➢ This is necessary because of human error or of failure of some parts or components may lead to catastrophic
damage to the system resulting in heavy men, money machine losses.
➢ Disasters at Bhopal, Chernobyl, failure of space lab, Apollo 13 are few examples of such threats. These disasters
demand a serious investigation and research to ensure a high degree of reliability of such high risk systems before
they are commissioned.
➢ Maintaining the safety and production of reliable products are the two aspects of the reliability field.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

➢ The reliability of a device is a quality of that device; however, it is not a quality which can be measured directly.

➢ Reliability is the probability of a successful operation of the device in the manner and under the
conditions of intended customer use.

➢ Reliability, in its simplest form, means the probability that a failure may not occur in a given time
interval.

➢ Reliability of a unit (or product) is the probability that the unit performs its intended function
adequately for a given period of time under the stated operating conditions or environment.

➢ It is seen that the definition of reliability stresses four points, namely:

▪ Probability
▪ Intended function
▪ Time
▪ Operating conditions

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability
Reliability
➢ Reliability is a probability of success, i.e. reliability is a statistical concept.
➢ The probability of no failure occurring in the period from the beginning of the operation up to time t is the
reliability R(t) of a unit, product or system.
➢ If T is the time till the failure of the unit occurs, then the probability of no failure in a given environment before
time t is

𝑅 𝑡 = 𝑃 𝑇 > 𝑡 … … … … (1)

➢ Since reliability is probability, its numerical is always between 1 and 0, i.e.,

𝑅 0 = 1, 𝑅 ∞ = 0 … … … … … (2)

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability
Exponential law of reliability
➢ The exponential function can be mathematically
described by means of a single parameter T, 1.0
called the Mean-Time-Between-Failure 𝑇
(MTBF) of the system and is the arithmetic 0.95 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡 = , 𝑅=𝑒 −
1
10 = 0.90
10
average of the failure free intervals. Thus 0.90
𝑡
𝑅 𝑡 = 𝑒 − ൗ𝑇 … … … … (3)

Reliability (R)
𝑡
𝑅 = 𝑒 −𝑓𝑇 = 𝑒 − ൗ𝑇
𝑜𝑟 𝑅 𝑡 = 𝑒 −𝑓𝑡 … … … … (4)

1
𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑓 = … … … … (5) 0.37
𝑇
➢ f is called the constant failure rate and is the
average number of failures which occur in a
0 𝑇 𝑇 Time (t) T
standard interval of time. 20 10

Fig. Reliability curve for f = constant.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability
Failures and failure modes
➢ However, the failure rate is not constant over the entire life of a system. Reliability distinguishes three inherent
type of failures which may be inherent in the equipment/system and occur without any fault on the part of the
operator. These are
▪ Early failures (initial failure/ infant failure)
▪ Chance failures (catastrophic failure/ random failure)
▪ Wearout failures

➢ Early failures are primarily due to manufacturing defects, such as weak parts, poor insulation, bad assembly,
poor fits, etc. Since the defective units are eliminated during the initial failure period, this period is known as the
debugging or burn-in period.

➢ After initial failure, for a long period of time of operation fewer failures are reported but it is difficult to determine
their cause. The failure during this period are often called random failures or catastrophic failures. This is the
period of normal operation and is characterized by (approximately) constant number of failures per unit time.

➢ As time passes on, the units get outworn and begin to deteriorate. This region is called the wear-out region.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability
Failures and failure modes
➢ A typical curve depicting the failure rate for Early Catastrophic Wear-out
the entire life of a system is shown in Fig. and failure failure failure
is known as the bathtub curve in reliability
terminology.

S2

Failure rate
S1

Burn-in f = constant Wear-out

period period
Useful life

0 t1 Time t2

Fig. Failure rate curve. operating stress S1,

operating stress S2 (S2 > S1)

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Unreliability
➢ The opposite of reliability is known as unreliability
➢ Unreliability is the probability of failure in time t. If R(t) is the probability of success and Q(t) is the probability of
failure of a system in time t, then the sum of R(t) and Q(t) is unity. So,

𝑅 𝑡 + 𝑄(𝑡) = 1 … … … … … (6)

𝑜𝑟 𝑄 𝑡 =1−𝑅 𝑡 … … … … … (7)

𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑅 𝑡 =1−𝑄 𝑡 … … … … … (8)

➢ Q(t) may also be written as

𝑡
𝑄 𝑡 = 1 − 𝑒 − ൗ𝑇 … … … … (9)
𝑜𝑟 𝑄 𝑡 = 1 − 𝑒 −𝑓𝑡 … … … … (10)

➢ If the reliability R(t) of a system for time t is, for example 90%, then the unreliability Q(t) for the same system and
same time is 10%.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

1.0

𝑡
𝑄 = 1 − 𝑅 = 1 − 𝑒 − ൗ𝑇

Q
R
0.63

0.50

0.37 𝑡
𝑅 = 𝑒 − ൗ𝑇

0 Time (t)

Fig. Reliability and unreliability curve

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Causes of failure and unreliability

➢ The specific causes of failures of components and equipments in a system cab be many, such as
▪ Poor design (component or system)
▪ Wrong manufacturing techniques
▪ Lack of total knowledge and experience
▪ Complexity of equipment
▪ Poor maintenance policies
▪ Organizational rigidity and complexity and
▪ Human errors
System simplification
➢ In many cases a complex and sophisticated system is used to accomplish a task which could have been done by
other simple schemes.
➢ The implication of simplicity are costly.
➢ Firstly, it employs more components thereby decreasing overall reliability of the system.
➢ Secondly, a complex scheme presents problems in terms of users understanding and maintenance.
➢ On the other hand, simplicity costs less, causes less problems, and has more reliability.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Maintenance
➢ The important period in the life cycle of a product or a system is its operating period. Since no product is perfect, it is
likely to fail.
➢ However, its life time can be increased if it can be repaired and put into operation again.
➢ In many cases preventive measures are possible and a judiciously designed preventive maintenance policy can help
eliminate failures to a large extent.
➢ The adage “prevention is better than cure” applies to products and equipments as well.

Communication and coordination

➢ Reliability is a concern of almost all departments of an organization.
➢ It is essentially a birth-to-death problem involving such areas as raw material and parts, conceptual and detailed
engineering design, production, test and quality control, product shipment and storage, installation, operation and
maintenance.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Human reliability
➢ It is impossible to completely eliminate the human involvement in the operation and maintenance of systems.
➢ The contribution of human errors to the unreliability may be at various stages of the product cycle.
➢ Failures due to the human error can be due to
▪ Lack of understanding of the equipment
▪ Lack of understanding of the process
▪ Carelessness
▪ Forgetfulness
▪ Poor judgmental skills
▪ Absence of correct operating procedures and instructions and
▪ Physical inability

➢ It is not possible to eliminate all human errors, it is possible to minimize some of them by the proper selection and
training of personnel, simplification of control schemes and other incentive measures.
➢ The designer should ensure that the operation of the equipment is as simple as possible with practically minimum
probability for error.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Human reliability

➢ The following checklist should prove useful to the design engineer

▪ Is the operator position comfortable for operating the controls?

▪ Do any of the operations require excessive amount of physical effort?
▪ Is the lighting of the workplace and surrounding area satisfactory?
▪ Does the room temperature cause many discomfort to the operation?
▪ Are noise and vibration within the tolerable limits?
▪ Does the layout ensure the required minimum movement of the operator?
▪ Can the operators judgement be further minimized?

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Maintainability and availability

➢ Equipment is likely to fail during its operation which might be costly in terms of money and time or sometimes
dangerous in terms of safety.
➢ Maintenance, therefore becomes an important consideration in the long-term performance of the equipment.
➢ The equipment requires preventive maintenance and elimination of failures during its operation.
➢ Maintainability can be defined as the probability that a failed equipment restored to operable condition in a specified
time (called down time) when the maintenance is performed under stated conditions.
➢ The more reliable an equipment and better its maintainability, the rarer it fails and the shorter its down-time.
➢ Availability is another measure of performance of maintained equipments.
➢ It integrates both reliability and maintainability parameters and depends on the number of failures that occur and on
how quickly any faults are rectified. Availability can be expressed as

𝑈𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒
𝐴𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 =
𝑈𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 + 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒

➢ The denominator is equal to the total time for which the equipment is required to function and the up-time is the
actual period for which the equipment is available for use.
➢ The down-time can include, in addition to active repair-time, administrative and other delays related to repair.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Quantitative analysis of reliability

➢ The choice of reliability measure for maintained systems requires the consideration of whether the main penalty or
cost of the system failure depends on
▪ The total duration of failure or
▪ The frequency of failures
➢ For example, in a period of 1000 hours the system may fail twice and be down for 5 hours each time, yielding an
availability of 0.99. On the other hand, the system may fail 5 times in the same period and be down for 2 hours
each time, also yielding an availability of 0.99.

➢ The facts which are mainly responsible for contribution to the above measures are:

▪ The complete failure process

▪ The system structure
▪ The maintainability and its policies and
▪ The states in which the system is defined as success

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Procedure of reliability analysis

➢ A procedure for reliability analysis is as follows:
a) To define reliability goals and criteria
b) To determine the physical model, basic component events, and repair rate
c) To collect component and subsystem characteristics with respect to various stress such as thermal, electrical etc.
d) To select the methods and mathematical models in view of (b) and (c)
e) To evaluate the mathematical models numerically
f) To compare the results
g) To develop alternative design if the reliability goals are not achieved

➢ The methods should be as far as possible more general and applicable to system with:

▪ Identical and non-identical components

▪ Dependent and independent components
▪ Time dependent and time independent component failure rates
▪ System and component redundancy and
▪ Repair and maintenance policies

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Techniques of reliability analysis

➢ Reliability evaluation of series, parallel, series-parallel and non-series-parallel systems has been studied in detail.
The methods can be classified into the following broad categories:
a) Approximate methods
b) Exact methods
➢ The methods under category (b) may further be classified as follows:
1. Exhaustive search (event space) method
2. Flow graph (factoring) method
3. Baye’s theorem (decomposition)
4. Paths enumeration
▪ Direct expansion
▪ Canonical expansion
▪ Direct extraction of disjoint events
5. Cuts enumeration
▪ Direct expansion
▪ Canonical expansion
▪ Direct extraction of disjoint events

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Techniques of reliability analysis

➢ Exhaustive search (event space) method requires more time and memory than others.
➢ Flow graph (factoring) method has the limitation that this is only applicable to the system which has perfect nodes.
➢ There are mainly two advantages associated with the Baye’s technique; namely
1. Requirements of less computer storage and
2. Less computing time in the CPU
➢ Paths and cuts enumeration techniques are related to reliability logic diagram (RLD).
➢ Once the reliability logic diagram is available, reliability expression can be found from enumerated pathsets or
cutsets of the RLD.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models

System reliability models

➢ One approach for analyzing system is to decompose them into subsystems of convenient size, each representing a
specific function.
➢ Reliabilities of subsystems are then estimated and combined to determine the reliability of the entire system using
certain probability laws.
➢ Reliability models for various kinds of subsystem (or systems) are based on the assumptions that the components
fail independently of each other, i.e. the failure of one component does not change the failure of other components.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models

Systems with components in series

➢ Consider a system having a total of n components. IN 1 2 n OUT

Fig. Series system

➢ The information at the IN end will reach the OUT end only if all the n components function satisfactorily.

➢ Let, Ei denotes the event that the component i is good (i.e. functions satisfactorily) and 𝐸
ഥ𝑖 the event that the
component i is bad.
➢ The event representing system success is then the intersection of E1, E2, …., En. The reliability of the system is the
probability of this event and is given by

𝑅 = 𝑃𝑟 (𝐸1 ∩ 𝐸2 ∩ … … ∩ 𝐸𝑛 )
= 𝑃𝑟 𝐸1 𝑃𝑟 𝐸2 Τ𝐸1 𝑃𝑟 𝐸3 Τ𝐸1 𝐸2 … … … … … … . . (1)

➢ 𝑃𝑟 𝐸2 /𝐸1 means the probability of the event E2 on the condition that E1 has occurred.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models

Systems with components in series

➢ However we have assumed that the components are independent and therefore

𝑅 = 𝑃𝑟 𝐸1 . 𝑃𝑟 𝐸2 … … … . . 𝑃𝑟 𝐸𝑛 … … … … … (2)

➢ This can be evaluated using failure events 𝐸

ഥ𝑖 also. In this case

𝑅 = 1 − (𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑢𝑟𝑒)

➢ The system fails if any of the components fail and therefore

𝑅 = 1 − 𝑃𝑟 𝐸1 ∪ 𝐸2 ∪ … … ∪ 𝐸𝑛 … … … . (3)

➢ It can be easily verified by using the relationship

𝑃𝑟 𝐸𝑖 + 𝑃𝑟 𝐸ഥ𝑖 = 1

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models

Systems with components in series

➢ The time dependent reliability function is 𝑛

𝑅 𝑡 = 𝑝1 𝑡 … … … 𝑝𝑛 𝑡 = ෑ 𝑝𝑖 𝑡 ………. (4)
𝑖=1
➢ Where 𝑝𝑖 𝑡 is the probability that the component i is good at time t. If the time to failure of components are
exponentially distributed, then
𝑛 𝑛
𝑡 ……….. (5)
𝑝𝑖 𝑡 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝 −𝑓𝑖 𝑡 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝 − 𝑅 𝑡 = ෑ 𝑒𝑥𝑝 −𝑓𝑖 𝑡 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝 −𝑡 ෍ 𝑓𝑖
𝑇𝑖
𝑖=1 𝑖=1

➢ Mean time to failure of the system is

∞
1
𝑀𝑇𝑇𝐹 = න 𝑅 𝑡 𝑑𝑡 = ……… (6)
0 σ𝑛𝑖=1 𝑓𝑖

➢ Where Ti is the mean life of the component i.

1 1 1 1
➢ The system mean life (T) and mean life of components (Ti ) are related by = + + ………
𝑇 𝑇1 𝑇2 𝑇𝑛

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models

Systems with components in series

➢ Another important characteristics of a series system is that its reliability is always worse than the
poorest component.
➢ For example, a system having three subsystems with reliability of 0.6, 0.9, and 0.8 will have a reliability of

0.6 × 0.9 × 0.8 = 0.432

➢ Which is less than 0.6. This illustrates the effect of an increase in the number of components on the system
reliability. Thus, the component minimization technique is one of the useful means of achieving higher reliability of
systems.
➢ Situations, where the components are identical and for such cases

𝑅 = 𝑝𝑛 = (1 − 𝑞)𝑛 … … … (7)

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 System reliability models
Systems with parallel components
➢ A system with m components is known as an m-unit parallel system if and only if the successful functioning of any
one of the components leads to the system success.
➢ In other words, the system fails only when all units fail. The system reliability is

𝑅 = 1 − 𝑃𝑟 (𝐸1 )𝑃𝑟 (𝐸2 ) … … … 𝑃𝑟 (𝐸𝑚 ) 1

𝑚 𝑚

𝑅 𝑡 = 1 − ෑ 𝑞𝑖 𝑡 = 1 − ෑ[1 − 𝑝𝑖 𝑡 ] … … … (8)
IN 2
𝑖=1 𝑖=1
OUT

𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑖 𝑡 = 𝑃𝑟 (𝐸𝑖 ) 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑞𝑖 𝑡 = 𝑃𝑟 (𝐸ഥ𝑖 )

m
➢ If all the components have the same reliability, then the above equation
becomes
𝑚
Fig. Parallel system
𝑅 =1− 1−𝑝 𝑡 ………… (9)

𝑜𝑟 𝑄 = [𝑞 𝑡 ]𝑚

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Methods of reliability enhancement

➢ A number of methods are available to enhance the reliability of a system. Some of the important methods are given
below:
1. Parts improvement
2. Effective and creative design
3. System simplification
4. Use of overrated components
5. Structural redundancy
6. Maintenance and repair

➢ Structural redundancy provides a very effective means of improving system reliability. This involves duplication of
paths at component, subsystem or even system level and appears to be the only effective solution when components
with high reliability and/or over rated components are not available.

➢ Maintenance and repair, whenever possible, undoubtedly boost the system reliability. A maintained system when
combined with redundancy may have a reliability of almost one.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Reliability improvement through redundancy

➢ Redundancy can be defined as the existence of more than one means of accomplishing a task
➢ Redundancy consists essentially of the use of duplicate elements. Generally the elements are connected in parallel
so that each parallel element can function independently of the other and each can achieve the desired function.
➢ However redundancy can be applied either in component/subsystem level or in system level.
➢ The redundancy in component level increases the reliability more than the system redundancy.

Advantages of redundancy to improve system reliability

➢ Any desired level of reliability can be achieved (if the available resources permit)
➢ Increase in reliability per unit resource spent is highest when optimal redundancy techniques are employed
➢ Design through redundancy needs comparatively less skill on the part of designer
➢ It provides a quick solution and
➢ This method can be applied in the event of failure of all other methods

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Examples of such systems or subsystems where redundancy is extensively used

▪ Interconnected power systems

▪ Protective systems for nuclear reactors
▪ Aircraft propulsion systems
▪ Satellite communication systems
▪ Ignition systems for rocket engines
▪ Temperature control systems for space vehicles and
▪ Data processing systems

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Redundancy technique
➢ A redundancy system having m units connected in parallel is preferred as an m-order system.
➢ The performance requirements of such a system may impose a condition that at least a minimum of k of its m units
should be operational for the system success.
➢ These k units are known as basic units and the remaining (m-k) units are known as redundant units (added for the
purpose of increasing the system reliability).
➢ Such systems are classified as k-out-of-m systems.
➢ Series (k = m) and parallel (k = 1) are the special cases of a k-out-of-m model. Example of this type of systems are
as follows:
▪ In an eight cylinder automobile it may be possible to drive the car if only four cylinders are firing , but if less
than four fire, then the automobile cannot be driven (k = 4, m = 8).
▪ In a communication system with three transmitters, the average measure load may be such that at least two
transmitters must be operational at all times otherwise critical measure will be lost (k = 2, m = 3).
▪ A four engine aircraft needs only two engines to perform critical functions (m = 4, k = 2)
▪ A bridge supported by n cables may require only r cables to support the maximum load (m = n, k = r)

➢ Incorporating redundancy into the system, the main problem is to determine the value of m and k under certain
constraints of reliability, mean life, cost, performance etc..

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Types of redundancy
➢ Redundancy applied either in component level or in system level may be any one of the following four types:
▪ Active redundancy (Hot redundancy)
▪ Standby redundancy (Cold redundancy)
▪ Voting redundancy and
▪ Spinning redundancy

➢ In active redundancy, all the units used in the system remain active for all the time.

➢ In standby redundancy, the excess unit remains inactive, it only becomes active when an active unit fails to
operate. However, standby redundancy involves the use of failure sensing and switching devices also. If the sensing
and switching devices themselves are not reliable, it can render standby redundancy a useless proposition.

➢ The voting redundancy may also be used in the system where computer application is necessary.

➢ Spinning redundancy is used where a system/unit needs warm up time before taking full load. The redundant
unit remains active without load and takes over the charge immediately after the failure of the main unit, thereby
saving the warm up time. For example, in a power generation system, a redundant steam turbine always rotates
without load and when the system fails, the turbine takes over the charge.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Redundancy technique in system design

➢ The various approaches for introducing redundancy in the system are:

▪ The simplest and straight forward approach is to provide a duplicate path for the entire system itself. This is
known as system or unit redundancy.

▪ Another approach is to provide redundant paths for each component individually. This is called component
redundancy.

▪ The third method suggests that the weak components a should be identified and strengthened for reliability.
This approach is useful when we consider reliability and cost optimization problems.

▪ The last approach is to appropriately mix the above techniques depending upon the system configuration and
reliability requirements. This approach is known as mixed redundancy.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Component versus unit redundancy

➢ Consider a two component series system. The two ways of applying redundancy are shown in Fig. A

𝐶1 𝐶2 𝐶1 𝐶2

𝐶1 𝐶2 𝐶1 𝐶2

(a) Unit redundancy (b) Component redundancy

Fig. A: Two-element active redundant systems

➢ Assuming statistically independent and identical units at each element level, the reliability of the unit redundant
system is

𝑅𝑢 = 1 − (1 − 𝑝1 𝑝2 )(1 − 𝑝1 𝑝2 ) = 2𝑝1 𝑝2 − 𝑝1 2 𝑝2 2 ………… (1)

where p1 and p2 are the reliabilities of components C1 and C2.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Component versus unit redundancy

➢ For the case of component redundancy, the reliability is

𝑅𝑐 = [1 − (1 − 𝑝1 )2 ][1 − (1 − 𝑝2 )2 ]

= 4𝑝1 𝑝2 + 𝑝1 2 𝑝2 2 − 2𝑝1 2 𝑝2 − 2𝑝1 𝑝2 2 ……………… (2)

➢ If we assume p1 = p2 for the sake of simplicity, we obtain

𝑅𝑢 = 2𝑝2 − 𝑝4 … … … … . . (3)
𝑅𝑐 = 𝑝2 (2 − 𝑝)2 … … … … . . (4)

➢ Then 𝑅𝑐 − 𝑅𝑢 = 𝑝2 [ 2 − 𝑝 2 − 2 − 𝑝2 ]

= 𝑝2 (2 − 4𝑝 + 2𝑝2 ) = 2𝑝2 ( 1 − 𝑝 2 ………… (5)

➢ Eq. (5) clearly shows that 𝑅𝑐 − 𝑅𝑢 > 0 for 0 < 𝑝 < 1 . Of course, 𝑅𝑐 − 𝑅𝑢 = 0 for 𝑝 = 1 and 𝑝 = 0

****** This proves that redundancy at the component level is better than redundancy at the unit level as
far as reliability is concerned.
 Redundancy

Component versus unit redundancy

➢ This analysis can be extended to a more general case where the unit consists of n components in series. Assuming
that m-1 components are put in parallel in each stage, the reliability of the system would be

𝑚 𝑛
𝑅𝑐 = 1 − 1 − 𝑝 …………. (6)

➢ In the case of unit redundancy, m-1 units are added across the primary unit and therefore its reliability is

𝑅𝑢 = 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑛 𝑚
…………. (7)

➢ Another important redundancy technique is to use partial redundancy popularly known as k-out-of-m
system. We know that a k-out-of-m system becomes a series structure when k = m and a parallel structure when k
= 1.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy

Weakest-link technique
➢ The reliability of a series structure is at the most equal to the reliability of the weakest component of the structure.
➢ Consider a simple system having two equipments A and B in series. Their probabilities of failure free operation are
0.9 and 0.6 respectively. This system has a reliability of 0.54 which is much less than 0.6, the reliability of the
weakest equipment.
➢ The system reliability can be improved by one of the following ways:
▪ Apply redundancy across A only
▪ Apply redundancy across B only
▪ Apply redundancy across A and B individually (component redundancy)
▪ Apply redundancy across both A and B combinedly (unit redundancy)

➢ Various system configurations and their resultant reliabilities are shown in Table A. Their reliabilities show that
the application of redundancy across a weaker equipment results in higher reliability compared to the
redundancy across the stronger equipment.

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy (Mathematics)

Table A: Redundancy technique

Type System configuration System reliability

(𝒑𝒂 = 𝟎. 𝟗 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝒑𝒃 = 𝟎. 𝟔)
a
𝐴 𝐵 𝑅 = 𝑝𝑎 𝑝𝑏 = 0.540

b
𝐴 𝐵
𝑅 = 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑎 2 𝑝𝑏 = 𝟎. 𝟓𝟗𝟒
𝐴
c
𝐴 𝐵
2
𝑅 = 𝑝𝑎 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑏 = 𝟎. 𝟕𝟓𝟔

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Redundancy (Mathematics)

Table A: Redundancy technique

Type System configuration System reliability

(𝒑𝒂 = 𝟎. 𝟗 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝒑𝒃 = 𝟎. 𝟔)
d
𝐴 𝐵 2
𝑅 = 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑎 𝑝𝑏 = 0.7884
𝐴 𝐵

e
𝐴 𝐵
2 2
𝑅 = 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑎 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑎 = 0.832
𝐴 𝐵

f
𝐴 𝐵
3
𝑅 = 𝑝𝑎 1 − 1 − 𝑝𝑏 = 0.842
𝐵

𝐵
 Redundancy (Mathematics)

Table A: Redundancy technique

Type System configuration System reliability

(𝒑𝒂 = 𝟎. 𝟗 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝒑𝒃 = 𝟎. 𝟔)

g 𝐴 𝐵
Home Task
𝐴
𝐴 𝐵
h 𝐴 𝐵
𝐵
Home Task
𝐴 𝐵
𝐵
i
𝐴 𝐵

𝐵 Home Task
𝐴

𝐵
 Redundancy

Mixed redundancy
➢ Component and unit redundancies are simple to design and easy to implement.
➢ However, they are not the best configurations and their might be scope for further improvement in their reliability-
cost ratios.
➢ In configuration (h) in Table A, the reliability of a weak component is improved first and then unit redundancy is
applied. Its reliability is higher than the reliability of the simple component redundancy.

Redundant system Basic Nonredundant

➢ Example of a mixed redundancy system is the system
F1 F3
power distribution system for a chemical
processing industry as shown in Fig. A
F5
➢ The industry gets power from two generating
stations, each of which is connected through a F7
G1 Industry G2
double-feeder network.
➢ The feeder system shown in thick line is the F6
basic nonredundant system. The second
generator and the other feeders provide the F2 F4
redundancy.

Fig. A: Mixed redundant power supply system

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Reliability and cost

➢ The cost of various methods of achieving the reliability will
vary according to the following:
▪ Types of components
▪ Cost of maintenance
▪ Accessibility of the product for the maintenance
▪ Time and manpower available for the design and Total cost
▪ Constraints such as weight, volume, etc.

Cost
➢ The effect of increase in the reliability on the cost for any
product is shown in Fig. Maintenance
and repair cost Design and
➢ The initial cost increases but the operating cost decreases
production cost
with the reliability and hence there exists a value of the
reliability for which the cost is minimum.

Reliability

Fig. Reliability and cost

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

 Reliability

Reliability versus cost

1.0
➢ Reliability growth is actually a staircase function, each step
corresponding to the addition of an equipment in a stage.

Reliability
0.9
∆𝑹
➢ It shows that beyond a certain point, any increase in expenditure,
no matter how large, will not result in a significant increase in 0.8 ∆𝑪
the system reliability.
0.7

25 50 75 100 125 150

Cost
Fig. Reliability versus cost plot

Protik Chandra Biswas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KUET

Q&A

THANKS TO ALL