Revision to Reliability Engineering & System Safety System Reliability Analysis Using Component-Level and System-Level Accelerated Life Testing

Author(s):  
Kassem Moustafa ◽  
Zhen Hu ◽  
Zissimos P. Mourelatos ◽  
Igor Baseski ◽  
Monica Majcher
2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Hu ◽  
Zissimos P. Mourelatos

Testing of components at higher-than-nominal stress level provides an effective way of reducing the required testing effort for system reliability assessment. Due to various reasons, not all components are directly testable in practice. The missing information of untestable components poses significant challenges to the accurate evaluation of system reliability. This paper proposes a sequential accelerated life testing (SALT) design framework for system reliability assessment of systems with untestable components. In the proposed framework, system-level tests are employed in conjunction with component-level tests to effectively reduce the uncertainty in the system reliability evaluation. To minimize the number of system-level tests, which are much more expensive than the component-level tests, the accelerated life testing (ALT) design is performed sequentially. In each design cycle, testing resources are allocated to component-level or system-level tests according to the uncertainty analysis from system reliability evaluation. The component-level or system-level testing information obtained from the optimized testing plans is then aggregated to obtain the overall system reliability estimate using Bayesian methods. The aggregation of component-level and system-level testing information allows for an effective uncertainty reduction in the system reliability evaluation. Results of two numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Author(s):  
Zhen Hu ◽  
Zissimos P. Mourelatos

Testing of components at higher-than-nominal stress level provides an effective way of reducing the required testing effort for system reliability assessment. Due to various reasons, not all components are directly testable in practice. The missing information of untestable components poses significant challenges to the accurate evaluation of system reliability. This paper proposes a sequential accelerated life testing (SALT) design framework for system reliability assessment of systems with untestable components. In the proposed framework, system-level tests are employed in conjunction with component-level tests to effectively reduce the uncertainty in the system reliability evaluation. To minimize the number of system-level tests which are much more expensive than the component-level tests, the accelerated life testing design is performed sequentially. In each design cycle, testing resources are allocated to component-level or system-level tests according to the uncertainty analysis from system reliability evaluation. The component-level or system-level testing information obtained from the optimized testing plans are then aggregated to obtain the overall system reliability estimate using Bayesian methods. The aggregation of component-level and system-level testing information allows for an effective uncertainty reduction in the system reliability evaluation. Results of two numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kassem Moustafa ◽  
Zhen Hu ◽  
Zissimos P. Mourelatos ◽  
Igor Baseski ◽  
Monica Majcher

Abstract Accelerated life test (ALT) has been widely used to accelerate the product reliability assessment process by testing a product at higher than nominal stress conditions. For a system with multiple components, the tests can be performed at component-level or system-level. The data at these two levels require different amount of resources to collect and carry different values of information for system reliability assessment. Even though component-level tests are cheap to perform, they cannot account for the correlations between the failure time distributions of different components. While system-level tests can naturally account for the complicated dependence between component failure time distributions, the required testing efforts are much higher than that of component-level tests. This research proposes a novel resource allocation framework for ALT-based system reliability assessment. A physics-informed load model is first employed to bridge the gap between component-level tests and system-level tests. An optimization framework is then developed to effectively allocate testing resources to different types of tests. The information fusion of component-level and system-level tests allows us to accurately estimate the system reliability with a minimized requirement on the testing resources. Results of two numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 5859-5865
Author(s):  
C Kalaiselvan ◽  
Lokavarapu Bhaskara Rao

Compare to previous decay, now days consumer expectation is very high about the electronic product what they are going to purchase. The consumer analyzes the quality of the product with the product competitors. The electronic component manufacturer is under immersive pressure to show their reliability of their product and maintain their place in the market. Reliability engineering helps to announce the guaranty period of the electronic product. Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) is the latest technology in the reliability field for testing the electronic components. The highly accelerated life testing is conducted at accelerated stress level to generate more failure data in a short span of time. The Capacitor test board is used to test the most commonly used X5R Ceramic Capacitor to identify the time to failure data (TTF). The time to failure data follows a statistical distribution to find out the mean time to failure data (MTTF) at accelerated conditions. The time to failure data of capacitor at accelerated condition is converted to actual conditions and integrated with PLM solution using SQL Query, Java and HTML. The integration helps to reduce product time to market and increase the profitability of the manufacturer.


Author(s):  
Kassem Moustafa ◽  
Zhen Hu ◽  
Zissimos P. Mourelatos ◽  
Igor Baseski ◽  
Monica Majcher

Abstract Accelerated life test (ALT) has been widely used to accelerate the product reliability assessment process by testing product at higher than nominal stress conditions. For a system with multiple components, the tests can be performed at component-level or system-level. The data at these two levels require different amount of resources to collect and carry different values of information for system reliability assessment. Even though component-level tests are cheap to perform, they cannot account for the correlations between the failure time distributions of different components. While system-level tests can naturally account for the complicated dependence between component failure time distributions, the required testing efforts are much higher than that of component-level tests. This research proposes a novel resource allocation framework for ALT-based system reliability assessment. A physics-informed load model is first employed to bridge the gap between component-level tests and system-level tests. An optimization framework is then developed to effectively allocate testing resources to different types of tests. The information fusion of component-level and system-level tests allows us to accurately estimate the system reliability with a minimized requirement on the testing resources. Results of one numerical example demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 42-54
Author(s):  
Amar Thiraviam ◽  
Linda Malone

AbstractAccelerated life testing (ALT) is an effective method of demonstrating and improving product reliability in applications where the products are expected to perform for a long period of time. ALT accelerates a given failure mode by testing at amplified stress level(s) in excess of operational limits. Statistical analysis (parameter estimation) is then performed on the data, based on an acceleration model to make life predictions at use level. The acceleration model thus forms the basis of ALT methodology. Well-established accelerated models such as the Arrhenius model and the Inverse Power Law (IPL) model exist for key stresses such as temperature and voltage, but there are other stresses, like subsea pressure, where there are no clear models of choice. This research proposes a pressure-life (acceleration) model for the first time for life prediction under subsea pressure for key mechanical/physical failure mechanisms.Three independent accelerated tests were conducted, and their results were analyzed to identify the best model for the pressure-life relationship. The testing included material tests in standard coupons to investigate the effect of subsea pressure on key physical, mechanical, and electrical properties. Tests were also conducted at the component level on critical components that function as a pressure barrier. By comparing the likelihood values of multiple reasonable candidate models for the individual tests, the exponential model was identified as a good model for the pressure-life relationship. In addition to consistently providing good fit among the three tests, the exponential model was also validated with over 10 years of field data and demonstrated several characteristics that enable robust life predictions in a variety of scenarios. In addition, the research also used the process of Bayesian analysis to incorporate prior information from field and test data to bolster the results and increase the confidence in the predictions from the proposed model.


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