TABLE OF CONTENTS Reliability engineering approaches its responsibility for participation in a development or procurement project through application of a series of commonsense-based activities consisting of management, analyses, and testing. These activities provide a consistent methodology for predicting the reliability potential of a system, testing the system to verify the achievement of a degree of reliability, and managing the reliability engineering process.
Reliability engineering activities for participation in the development or selection of a system design and then evaluation of the resulting configuration may consist of up to nine discrete but interrelated analyses. These analyses, listed in Figure 5-12, are applied as appropriate to specific projects; however, the first four on the list should be applied to every project. Accurate and successful performance of these tasks is the key to developing a reliable item for a system.
Reliability modeling
Reliability allocation
Reliability prediction
Failure modes effects and criticality analysis
Sneak circuit analysis
Tolerance analysis
Parts control program
Reliability critical items analysis
Effects of testing, storage, packaging, handling, transportation, and maintenance
As stated previously, reliability is a statistical study. Therefore, the first step in initiating the statistical analysis is to develop a creditable method for modeling the reliability of an item. Reliability mathematical models are developed based on the functional operations of the system being analyzed and are tailored to reflect the specific operating requirements of the system. The purpose of modeling is to provide an accurate method...
