Reliability Engineering

Student Notes

Note
This document contains the important points discussed in the pre-recorded courseware. It will help in revising the
important concepts related to Reliability Engineering course.

This Student Note is authorized for use only by Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) - Pilani students. Copying or
posting of its content is an infringement of copyright.
 Reliability Engineering

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Lecture 1 Notes
Focus Topics:
 Professor Profile
 Course introduction
 Reliability Function R(t),
 Relation between f(t), F(t), R(t),
 Design life, Mean time to failure, Median time to failure,
 Variance, Hazard rate function, Cumulative and hazard rate function
1. Professor Introduction
 Dr. Gajanand Gupta
 Education background.
 Academia and Industry experience.
 Research background
 Subject expertise
2. Introduction course
 Key Points:
 Text book
 Charles E. Ebeling: An introduction to Reliability and maintainability
engineering, edition 2000, Fourteen reprint 2011, TMH, New Delhi
 Reference Book
 A.K.Gupta, Reliability,Maintenance and Safety Engineering, First
edition 2009, Reprint 2013, University Science Press, New Delhi
 E. Balagurusamy, Reliability Engineering, TMH, New Delhi
The topics to be covered in the part of course syllabus and how it will be
covered.
 What is Reliability?
 Reliability is the probability that parts, components, products, or systems will
perform their designed-for functions without failure in specified environments
for desired periods at a given confidence level.
 Reliability is the best quantitative measure of the integrity of a designed part,
component, product, or system
 Reasons for Reliability Engineering Programs
 The complexity of most products is increasing continuously
 The customers and the public are becoming more and
more reliability conscious every day as they realize how costly unreliability is
becoming in their daily efforts.

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 Reliability Engineering

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 World industry is introducing reliability engineering practices, so to stay ahead

of world competition, all industries need to be knowledgeable of and institute to
reliability engineering programs.
 More and more products are being advertised by their reliability ratings, such
as their failure rate, mean time between failures (MTBF), and reliability
 Applications and Benefits
 Study the types of failures experienced by parts, components, products and
systems and recommend design, research, and development efforts to
minimize these failures.
 Establish what failures occur at what time in the life of an equipment and be
prepared to cope with them.
 Determine the time-to-failure distribution of parts, components, products, and
systems.
 Study the effects of age, mission duration, application and operation stress
levels on reliability.
 Indicate areas in which design changes would be most beneficial from
the reliability improvement and cost reduction point of view.
 Provide a basis for comparing two or more designs and for choosing the best
from the reliability point of view.
 Evaluate the amount of redundancy present in the design.
 Estimate the required redundancy to achieve the specified reliability.
 Probability density function (PDF)
 A probability density function (PDF), or density of a continuous random
variable, is a function, whose value at any given sample (or point) in the sample
space (the set of possible values taken by the random variable) can be
interpreted as providing a relative likelihood that the value of the random
variable would equal that sample
 Reliability Function
 Reliability is defined as the probability that a system (Component) will function
over some time period t.
 Then Reliability Can be represented as R(t) Where R(t) ≥ 0, R(0) =1 and lim
t- ∞ R(t) =0
 F(t) = 1- R(t) Where F(0) = 0 and Lim t - ∞ F(t) = 1
F(t) is the probability that a failure occurs before time t.
R(t) = Reliability function
F(t) = cumulative distribution function
 Probability Density Function : f(t)

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 Reliability Engineering

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 Probability Density Function is the first derivative of the Failure Density Function
and given by f(t)
 F(t) = 1 – R(t)
𝑑𝐹(𝑡) 𝑑𝑅(𝑡)
 f(t) = =−
𝑑𝑡 𝑑𝑡
∞
 f(t) ≥ 0 and ∫0 𝑓(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡 = 1
𝑡 ∞
 F(t) = ∫0 𝑓(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡 and R(t) = ∫𝑡 𝑓(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡

 Design Life
 A design life is defined to be the time to failure t R that corresponds to a specified
/ desired reliability R.
 R (t R) = R
 Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)
 MTTF is the first moment of probability density function f(t)
∞ ∞
 MTTF = ∫0 𝑡 𝑓(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡 = ∫0 𝑅(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡

 Median Time to Failure (tmed)

 Median Time to Failure is the time with 50% of the failure occurring before the
median time to failure and 50% occurring after the median
 R (t med) = 0.5
∞ ∞
 VARIANCE = ∫0 (𝑡 − 𝑀𝑇𝑇𝐹)2 𝑓(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 = ∫0 𝑡 2 𝑓(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 − (𝑀𝑇𝑇𝐹)2

 Hazard Rate Function

 Hazard Rate Function is defined as the limit of the failure rate as the interval
approaches zero. The hazard function is the instantaneous failure rate
𝑅(𝑡)−𝑅(𝑡+ △𝑡) 𝑑𝑅(𝑡) 1 𝑓(𝑡)
ƛ (t) = Lim △t⤑0 ; ƛ (t) = - x 𝑅(𝑡) =
𝑅(𝑡) △𝑡 𝑑𝑡 𝑅(𝑡)
𝑑𝑅(𝑡) 𝑡
 ƛ (t) dt = - Integrating both sides then ∫0 ƛ(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 = - ln R(t)
𝑅(𝑡)
𝑡
 R(t) = exp [ - ∫0 ƛ(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 ]

 CFR and AFR

• Cumulative Failure Rate (CFR) over a period of time t is defined by
𝑡
L(t) = ∫0 ƛ(𝑡)𝑑𝑡

• Average Failure Rate (AFR) between two time periods t1 and t2 is defined by
1 𝑡2 ln 𝑅(𝑡1)−ln 𝑅 (𝑡2)
AFR (t1,t2) = ∫ ƛ(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 =
𝑡2−𝑡1 𝑡1 𝑡2 −𝑡1
ln 𝑅(0)−ln 𝑅 (𝑡) 0 −ln 𝑅(𝑡) 𝐿(𝑡)
If t1 = 0 and t 2 = t then AFR = = =
𝑡 𝑡 𝑡

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Students. Copying or posting of its content is an infringement of copyright. 3