Reliability in Engineering Design

The course is aimed at providing an engineering view (as opposed to a purely statistical view or a management view) of reliability analysis as well as reliable product design. The goal is to make the student familiar with both the statistical tools as well as the failure physics that enable one to model time to failure of products and to use such models during design phase to ensure reliable product designs.

Week 1:

• Introduction and Overview
• Rules of Probability

Week 2:

• Probability Examples
• Conditional Probability

Week 3:

• Expectations and Variance Definition
• Expectation and Variance of Continuous Functions
• Normal Distribution PDF and CDF

Week 4:

• Load-Strength Interference Theory
• Load-Strength Interference Examples

Week 5:

• Material Degradation and Time to Failure Modeling
• Practice Problems for Test 1

Week 6:

• Lognormal Distribution, Reliability, Hazard Rate and MTTF
• Test 1

Week 7:

• Exponential Distribution and Examples of MTTF Estimation
• Weibull Distribution

Week 8:

• Multimodal Distributions and Mixed Multiple Failure Mechanisms
• Goodness of Fit

Week 9:

• Binomial and Poisson Distributions
• Practice Problems for Test 2

Week 10:

• Reliability Block Diagrams
• Test 2

Week 11:

• Monte Carlo Simulation
• Uncertainty in Geometry, Load and Strength
• Covariance and Correlation

Week 12:

• Covariance and Correlation Examples
• First Order Reliability Methods Introduction

Week 13:

• First Order Reliability Methods Examples
• Reliability Review During Design

Week 14:

• Accelerated Degradation
• Accelerated Testing and Acceleration Factors
• Practice Problems for Test 3

Week 15:

• Time to Failure Models for Mechanical Systems
• Test 3