1 What are the main factors that influence the level of performance of a part or

component?
What are the causes of failure of engineering components?

The main factors that influence the level of performance of a part or component
are

A,Temperature affects material performance in many ways. As the temperature is

raised, the material may creep, limiting its ability to carry loads. It may degrade or
decompose, changing its chemical structure in ways that make it unusable

B,The second factor is internal factors that include the composition, micro
structure, purity and residual stress of the material. The slight change of these factors
will cause the fluctuation or even great change of material fatigue performance. The
influence of various factors on fatigue strength is an important aspect of fatigue
research

C,Affect due to mechanical force or load

There are the different type of mechanical forces can act on machine members and
produces different stress and strains. These following actions produce the different
types of forces in the machine parts factor affected.

1. Self-weight of the machine

2. Energy Transmitted
3. Change of temperature
4. Frictional resistance
5. The inertia of reciprocating parts
6. Unbalance of Moving parts.

Due to these actions, the following loads/Forces will produce.

 Tensile Forces
 Compressive Forces
 Shear Forces
 Bending Forces
 Torsion Forces
 Bearing Force

Due to these loads, different materials can be responds in a different way. These
responses will depend on the Mechanical properties of the materials.

D,wear and tear

As the moving parts or sliding parts needed to withstand the wear and tear as they
getting aged. So this is also a factor that makes the difference in performance of a
material for the machine parts.
E,Threshold stress intensity factor range

The threshold and the closure threshold stress intensity ranges both decreased
linearly as the stress ratio is increased. The threshold and opening threshold stress
intensities also decreased linearly as the magnitude of compressive peak stress is
increased.

F,Thermal properties

Thermal properties of the materials,can be affected engineering components while

picking a material for a machine part. it might affect the mechanical properties of the
materials due to the heat. In some applications, it is necessary to insulate the thermal
energy to flow between the mating parts.

The causes of failure of engineering components are

Some common reasons for components to fail include:

 Aging.
 Bad circuit design.
 Cascading failure.
 Change in the operating environment.
 Connected incorrectly.
 Connection failures.
 Contamination.
 Corrosion.

2. Explain the fatigue limit and fatigue life for safe-life fatigue of the engineering
materials.
Support your answer with diagrams.

Fatigue Limit. Fatigue limit (also sometimes called the endurance limit) is the stress
level, below which fatigue failure does not occur. This limit exists only for some
ferrous (iron-base) and titanium alloys,for which the S–N curve becomes horizontal at
higher N values. Other structural metals, such as aluminium and copper, do not have a
distinct limit and will eventually fail even from small stress amplitudes. Typical
values of the limit for steels are 1/2 the ultimate tensile strength, to a maximum of 290
MPa (42 ksi).
 Figure fatigue limit S-N curve

Figure fatigue life S-N curve

 Fatigue Life. Fatigue life characterizes a material’s fatigue behavior. It is the
number of cycles to cause failure at a specified stress level, as taken from the
S–N plot
The process of fatigue failure is characterized by three distinct steps:

 Crack initiation, in which a small crack forms at some point of high stress
concentration.
 Crack propagation, during which this crack advances incrementally with each
stress cycle. Most of the fatigue life is generally consumed in the crack growth
phase.
 Ultimate failure, which occurs very rapidly once the advancing crack has
reached a critical size.
Cracks associated with fatigue failure almost always initiate (or nucleate) on the
surface of a component at some point of stress concentration. Anything which leads to
stress concentration, and the development of cracks, will reduce fatigue life.
Therefore, increasing the degree of surface finish, polishing as compared to grinding,
 improves fatigue life. Increasing the strength and hardness of the surface layers of
metal components will also improve fatigue life.

3. Write the Failure investigation process steps in case of root curse of analyzing
of failures and acting to eliminate.

The Failure investigation process steps in case of root curse of analyzing of failures

Decisions must be made during any failure analysis, and the results of each step
dictate the next procedure. At Materialistic, our material, corrosion and mechanical
engineers systematically perform required tests as deemed necessary based on the
project at hand. Typical steps we often use in our root cause failure analysis
investigations:

 Review of background information

 Visual and non-destructive examination
 Microscopic examination
 Physical measurements
 Corrosion examination
 Chemical analysis
 Metallurgical testing / metallography
 Fractography examination
 Mechanical testing
 Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
 Elemental dispersive X-ray analysis (EDS)
 Fourier transformer infrared analysis (FTIR)
 X-ray diffraction
 Mechanical testing
 Surface analysis
 Finite elemental analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or other
engineering calculations
 Determination of mode of failure and primary cause
 FEA, CFD and other detailed engineering calculations

If an idea fits on more than one branch place it on both, be sure that the causes have a direct, logical
relationship to the problem or effect stated at the head of the fish bone. Continue until potential root cause
has been identified. A root cause is one that can explain the “Effect” and if removed would eliminate the
problem.

1. MATERIAL

Defective material, Wrong item for use

Contaminated Material, Wrong specification for use

Wrong test method (does not evaluate critical material parameters or functionality)

Outdated material (also see methods), Mix-up in Material

Inadequate container or storage

Unacceptable consistency ( in or out of specification)

Unacceptable supplier/manufacturer performance (quality, delivery)

Material from Unapproved Sources, Outdated material

Inadequate Container or Storage, Unacceptable consistency

2. MAN

Inadequate instruction or training, Human error

Unauthorized to operate, Unskilled and untrained
Insufficient number of people, Lack of planning

Inadequate resource allocation, Inadequate communication

3. MACHINE/EQUIPMENT

Equipment design inadequate or obsolete for use (capacity, tolerance, speed)

Incorrect tool selection, Out of calibration

Facility/room/area design not adequate for use (size, environment, finishes)

Facilities or equipment not qualified, capability is unknown or not documented

Facility / room / area fails to maintain specifications(also see design)

Equipment breakdowns (unpredictable); Capability or reliability unknown

Equipment not calibrated (also see methods)

Lack of or inadequate facility maintenance (unscheduled/reactive, routine, preventive, or predictive
maintenance)

Lack of or inadequate equipment maintenance (unscheduled/reactive, routine, preventive, or

Predictive)

4. METHOD/PROCESS

Inadequate design of formulation (stability, functionality)

Inadequate design of manufacturing process (sequence, timing, complexity)

Wrong or inadequate equipment (also see equipment)

Inadequate definition of steps, and critical parameters in batch records

Process science is not understood (also see people)

The process is not capable of consistent performance to meet specifications

The process is not adequately validated; critical parameters are unknown

Improper process/product test methods and/or specification, No procedure

Inadequate design for the use (too complicated, too many patches, does not handle expectation, not
fail-safe where needed, no feedback or communication loops)

Inadequate definition or unclear/understandable instructions (critical steps to reproduce the task

consistently are not defined in the SOP)

Ownership (individual) of the tasks and results are not defined

Accountability for results not accepted (also see people, management)

Inadequate communication of procedure or results (also see design and management)

Results of the procedure/process are not measured / trended / communicated

5. MEASUREMENT

Procedures not followed, Practices are not the same as written procedures,

Measuring techniques not validated.

6. ENVIRONMENT/MOTHER NATURE

Weather extremes (temperature, humidity, rain, wind etc.)

Improper monitoring of temperature

Humidity conditions and storage conditions during handling/transportation

7. DOCUMENTS

Forms missing information does not reflect task Format confusing and not user-friendly

Obsolete or uncontrolled editions

8. NON-ASSIGNABLE CAUSE

An assignable cause cannot be determined.

Each alternative shall be analyzed and checked for potential relationships between multiple
contributory factors.

Eliminate alternatives one by one after analysis that could not be the root cause.
Finally, list the probable cause and identify the exact root cause or causes among them Look for those
items that appear in more than one category. These become the “most probable causes”.

‘Human error’ can not be the only root cause or primary root cause for any problem. If ‘Human error’
is identified as a cause of the problem then the matter shall be further investigated to identify the root
cause to make as an error.

From those items identified as the “Most Probable Causes,” the team shall reach a consensus using
the team’s best collective judgment on listing those items being the “Most Probable Cause”.

4. Discuss about a general decision making process steps and write a case study
example .

Decision making process requires thinking process, time, efforts, resources and also a
little bit of knowledge and past experiences. Thinking process plays an important role
in decision making process because it allows you to judge each and every thing.
Timing is also important.

Taking right decisions on right time can save you from any trouble. Taking too little
time to take decisions or taking too much time to execute your decision can cause
many problems for you. Decision making processes also requires knowledge,
experience and research. If you have knowledge, you can find out different
alternatives for the problem faced. Making decisions without having proper
knowledge about the problem can cause difficulties.

In our view decision making power is the key to progress in life. You might have seen
many people who do not take proper decisions and then they have to suffer. On the
other hand people who have this decision making power, continues to progress in
their life. Not all of us have this decision making power. We try to make right
decisions but sometimes we make mistakes because we don’t know the steps that we
should follow during the decision making process. So in order to take right decisions,
it is important that we should know all the steps of decision making process and
follow them.
The 7 Steps of the Decision Making Process

Step #1: Describe the problem, challenge, or opportunity

What is the specific problem you must solve, or challenge you must overcome, or
opportunity you wish to take advantage of?

Being able to describe your objective succinctly is a sign you truly understand it.

Try to notice if you’re having trouble describing your objective, or your answer to the
above question is long-winded and meandering.

Pause at this step until you have confidence you know what you should focus on.

Sometimes writing can bring clarity. If the thoughts in your head are meandering and
disconnected, writing them down will force structure and connection.

Describing your objective out loud can be a great check for understanding.

Ask a friend or colleague to listen in. If they understand what you’re getting at, and
more importantly you do too, you’re on the right track.

Example

Remember the last time you had a problem to resolve with your boss?

Did you describe the problem more like this:

“I never know what to work on. My boss sends me stuff to do at random times, and
I’m not sure what’s most important. When he walks over to my desk, I’m afraid he’ll
interrupt what I’m doing to have me work on something totally different.”

Or more like this:

“I need to be able to prioritize what I’m working on at any given time.”

The second description is more specific and clear.

Compared to the first description, the second description makes me feel more
confident about solving the right problem if I go through the rest of the process.

Step #2: Create a set of potential solutions or responses

For those decisions you’ve made before, you might have strong intuition about the
best response.

In many cases, going with your gut can save time and energy.
But for those hairy decisions in uncharted territory, can you come up with some
creative ways to achieve your objective?

Your first idea is rarely the best option.

Asking people for help is a common way to generate potential solutions or responses.
But whom to ask?

Ideally you ask an expert. They can be a subject matter expert, or they can be a trusted
confidant who is an expert on you.

Yes, your mom is pretty much an expert on everything, because she will come up
with ideas that are well-suited to you.

Ideally you talk to both kinds of experts.

Difficult decisions are rarely one-size-fits-all. The right solution requires

understanding the situation, but also understanding where you or your company fits
into that situation.

Example

For many people, choosing which college to go to is one of the most important
decisions in life.

It sets the trajectory for your entire career, and can even influence what type of person
you marry and how you’re able to raise your family.

The valedictorian of my high school class got into Stanford, but she turned it down.

At first I was shocked, until I learned how she made her decision.

Just talking to career experts, Stanford would’ve been the obvious choice. According
to US News College Rankings, it ranks in the top 10 nationally.

But she didn’t just refer to expert lists and class counselors. Our valedictorian talked
to her family and to her pastor too.

From these conversations, she slowly realized how important it was for her to be close
to family and church.

She chose to apply to some colleges closer to home, and was accepted into a pretty
good one.

She’s doing fine by the way, having graduated from a prestigious medical school to
become a doctor.

Step #3: Collect data

How can you collect data for each of the potential solutions / responses? The best
decisions are usually data-driven.

Both quantitative and qualitative data are useful to make decisions.

Quantitative data is expressed in numbers. It tells you what is happening.

Qualitative data is expressed in words. It often tells you why it’s happening.

There are many ways to collect data.

Some of the most useful and easiest to implement are surveys, interviews, and
observations.

Online research is also an important way to gather information for your decision, but
be sure to check that your sources are credible.

Example

A couple of years ago, I was helping a technology startup boost their customer
growth.

First, I wanted to understand the customer acquisition funnel.

How many people were visiting the site? Of those visiting, how many were signing up
for the service?

Of those signing up, how many were staying on? And for those who left, how long
did it they stay on?

This quantitative data told me what the problem was. Lots of people were leaving the
service after a short time.

It was great to know where to focus our attention, but we still didn’t know how to fix
the problem. For that we needed to collect qualitative data so we could
understand why people were leaving.

We implemented a survey, asking people why they were leaving the service. We
noticed a trend: most people were leaving because the service was too slow.

For the next six months we focused on speeding up the service and scrapped plans to
add additional offerings. As a result, fewer people left and we boosted customer
growth by 27%.

Step #4: Evaluate each option

After collecting data, we can use it to measure the pros and cons for each of the
potential solutions / responses.

Once we measure the pros and cons, we can rank the options.

It can be difficult to rank options when the basis of ranking is not obvious. Sometimes
it can feel like you’re ranking apples and oranges.

In these situations, a rubric is really effective. Simply choose a few important factors
for your decision, and give each option a score for each factor.

Then add up the scores, and rank based on score.

Check in with your intuition too, though.

Our intuition translates the learnings of our entire life into emotions and physical
“gut” feelings to aid our decision making.

If the rubric and your intuition are pointing to the same solution, that’s worth paying
attention to.

Example

After we got married, my wife and I planned our honeymoon. For 3 weeks we could
go anywhere in the world.

We soon were caught in a paradox of choice. We listed 10 different regions of the

world to visit, everywhere from Southeast Asia to Scandinavia.

To help us choose, we created a rubric with the following factors: weather, distance
from home, romantic quality, outdoor activities, and food.

We scored each factor out of 10 points, so each destination could get a maximum
score of 50.

Southeast Asia got 45 points, and South Africa got 42 points.

While these scores were pretty close, our intuition had been telling us Southeast Asia
the entire time. We chose that destination, confident that our intuition and the data
were aligned.

Step #5: Choose a solution or response

Which option is the best? For which option do the pros outweigh the cons the most?

Choosing is an art, since there is almost never a silver bullet solution that guarantees
success at no cost.
How carefully you choose should be driven by how reversible the choice is.

Basically, if you can reverse your decision easily and at little cost, then it matters less
which decision you make first. You can try something to see if it works, then try
something else later if it doesn’t.

But if the decision is permanent and a matter of great consequence, then you need to
be very careful choosing.

Example

Zappos famously found success by offering insanely easy exchanges and returns for
their shoes.

Buying shoes online can be tricky because you can’t see how they fit.

If Zappos didn’t offer easy and free exchanges, your purchasing decision would be
permanent and you’d need to be sure of which pairs of shoes to buy.

You might never buy anything, because critical data to make your decision would be
impossible to collect before purchasing.

The reality is that your purchasing decision is reversible and low cost, so you can buy
shoes at Zappos without being 100% sure of your decision.

Millions of people have no trouble making purchasing decisions at Zappos every year,
resulting in over $2 billion in annual sales for the company.

Step #6: Take action

How can you most effectively execute on your decision?

Choosing is hard, but carrying out that choice can be just as difficult.

For complex decisions, it’s worth spending the time upfront to figure out how to take
action. It can save headache down the road.

In some cases, speed and efficiency is important. The early bird gets the worm.

In plenty of other cases, however, speed works against you. These are cases when
waiting has an advantage, because it gives time to gather more info or for the situation
to change for the better.

Example

In the world of building software, there are many ways to build the same thing.
That’s part of what makes software engineering fun, but it’s also what makes decision
making difficult.

A couple of years ago my team was building technology to livestream classroom

whiteboards to students learning math on their phones at home.

The engineers researched ways to build this really cool software, and voted for an
approach that would take 3 months.

It was March, and we didn’t need the new software until back to school season in
September. We resolved to put off deciding an approach for a couple months.

In April, an engineer found an alternative approach while researching a totally

separate project.

This alternative approach would shave 2 months off of the original timeline.

Because we spent time upfront thinking about the best plan of attack, we realized
waiting had an advantage.

Because we waited, we saved a boatload of time to spend on other exciting projects.

Step #7: Evaluate the impact of your decision and course correct if needed

Did your actions achieve your objectives? If not, why not?

It’s easy to overlook this critical step and move on to the next problem, but don’t let
that happen to you.

Instead, plan ahead and think of how you’ll evaluate whether the problem was solved.

Usually measuring a symptom of the problem and noticing whether it’s disappeared
or greatly reduced works well.

A symptom could be anything from joint pain after a workout to a key performance
indicator like customer churn rate.

Example

I’ve shared docs on Google Drive a million times.

Yet last week one of my investment partners didn’t receive something I shared with
him.

I shared the doc again. Sharing usually works, so I figured it was just a fluke and there
wasn’t any need to double check.

The next day, I find out he still didn’t get the doc. It’s a contract he needs to sign, and
with every day that passes there’s a chance someone else scoops up the investment
opportunity.

.
5. The engineering system can fail due to a maintenance error caused by factors
such as poor
equipment design, inadequate training, poor work environment, use of deficient
maintenance
manuals, or inadequate work tools. Two major factors for poor equipment
design are oversight
or no formal consideration of the occurrence of maintenance error. The “no
formal
consideration to the occurrence of maintenance error” factor can be caused by
either no
requirement in design specifications or insufficient allocated funds. Two
important factors for
poor work environment are inadequate lighting or inaccessibility. Similarly, two
main causes
for the use of deficient maintenance manuals are unavailability of compatible
maintenance
manuals or poorly written maintenance procedures.
Develop a fault tree for the top event “Engineering system failed due to
maintenance Error.”
Assume that the probability of occurrence of events E1, E2,…,E9 is 0.02. For
independent
events, calculate the probability of occurrence of the top Event T, i.e.,
engineering
system failed due to maintenance error.

Develop Figure of fault tree;

 Figure of fault tree

The probability of occurrence of event I1 is;

P(I1) = P (E1) + p(E1) _ P (E1) p(E2)
= 0.02 + 0.02 - (0.02 *0.02)
= 0.00396
The probability of occurrence of event I2 is given by;
P(I2) = p (I1) + P(E7) - P(I1)P(E7)
=0’0396 + 0.02 -(0.0396 * 0.02)
= 0.0588
The probability of occurrence of event I3 is ;
P(I3) = P (E6) + p (E5) - p(E6)P(E5)
= 0.02 + 0.02 - (0.02 * 0.02)
= 0.0396
The occurrence probability of event Ι4 is given by;
P (I4) = p (E3) + P (E4) - P (E3)P(E4)
= 0.02 + 0.02 - (0.02 * 0.02)
=0.0396
The top event T probability of occurrence is;
P (T) = 1 - {1-P(E8)}{1 -P(E9)}{1 - P(I2)}{1 - P(E3)}{1 - P(I4)}
=1 - (1-0.02 )(1 - 0.02)(1 - 0.0568)(1- 0.0396)(1 - 0.0396)
= 0.1663
There is approximately 17% chance the engineering system will fail due to main
tenancy .