Reliability assessment considering dependent competing failure process and shifting-threshold

The reliability assessment problem for products subject to degradation and random shocks is investigated. Two kinds of probabilistic models are constructed, in which the dependent competing failure process is considered. First, based on the assumption of cumulative shock, the probabilistic models for hard failure and soft failure are built respectively. On this basis, the dependent competing failure model involving degradation and shock processes is established. Furthermore, the situation of the shifting-threshold is also considered, in which the hard failure threshold value decreases to a lower level after the arrival of a certain number of shocks. A case study of fatigue crack growth is given to illustrate the proposed models. Numerical results show that shock has a significant effect on the failure process; meanwhile, the effect will be magnified when the value of the hard threshold shifts to a lower level.

Load Dependent Series-Parallel Systems with Common Bus Performance Sharing Mechanism

A series-parallel system was proposed with common bus performance sharing in which the performance and failure rate of the element depended on the load it was carrying. In such a system,the surplus performance of a sub-system can be transmitted to other deficient sub-systems. The transmission capacity of the common bus performance sharing mechanism is a random variable. Effects of load on element performance and failure rate were considered in this paper. A reliability evaluation algorithm based on the universal generating function technique was suggested. Numerical experiments were conducted to illustrate the algorithm.

Reliability modeling of mutual DCFP considering failure physical dependency

Degradation and overstress failures occur in many electronic systems in which the operation load and environmental conditions are complex.The dependency of them called dependent competing failure process(DCFP),has been widely studied.Electronic system may experience mutual effects of degradation and shocks,they are considered to be interdependent.Both the degradation and the shock processes will decrease the limit of system and cause cumulative effect.Finally,the competition of hard and soft failure will cause the system failure.Based on the failure mechanism accumulation theory,this paper constructs the shock-degradation acceleration and the threshold descent model,and a system reliability model established by using these two models.The mutually DCFP effect of electronic system interaction has been decomposed into physical correlation of failure,including acceleration,accumulation and competition.As a case,a reliability of electronic system in aeronautical system has been analyzed with the proposed method.The method proposed is based on failure physical evaluation,and could provide important reference for quantitative evaluation and design improvement of the newly designed system in case of data deficiency.

Dynamic Fatigue Reliability Analysis of Transmission Gear Considering Failure Dependence

Multiple failuremodes and strength degradation are usually inherent in the gear transmission system,which brings new challenges for conducting fatigue reliability analysis and design.This paper proposes a novel dynamic fatigue reliability analysis method for failure dependence and strength degradation based on the combination of theCopula function and Gamma process.Firstly,the dynamic simulation model of the gear transmission system is established to obtain the dynamic stress-time history.The Gamma process is then used to describe the strength degradation to establish the dynamic stress-strength interference model.The marginal distribution functions of tooth contact fatigue and dedendumbending fatigue are calculated respectively based on the dynamic interferencemodel.Finally,the joint distribution of the two failure modes can be obtained by the t-Copula function to characterize the failure dependence,and so the dynamic fatigue reliability considering failure dependence can be estimated.The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated with examples.The results reveal the temporal law of reliability and the effects of failure dependence on dynamic fatigue reliability.

System reliability evaluation method considering physical dependency with FMT and BDD analytical algorithm

Recently, the physics-of-failure(PoF) method has been more and more popular in engineering to understand the failure mechanisms(FMs) of products.However, due to the lack of system modeling methods and problem-solving algorithms,the information of FMs cannot be used to evaluate system reliability.This paper presents a system reliability evaluation method with failure mechanism tree(FMT) considering physical dependency(PDEP) such as competition, trigger, acceleration, inhibition, damage accumulation, and parameter combination.And the binary decision diagram(BDD) analytical algorithm is developed to establish a system reliability model.The operation rules of ite operators for generating BDD are discussed.The flow chart of system reliability evaluation method based on FMT and BDD is proposed.The proposed method is applied in the case of an electronic controller drive unit.Results show that the method is effective to evaluate system reliability from the perspective of FM.

A compositional method to model dependent failure behavior based on PoF models

In this paper, a new method is developed to model dependent failure behavior among failure mechanisms. Unlike the existing methods, the developed method models the root cause of the dependency explicitly, so that a deterministic model, rather than a probabilistic one, can be established. Three steps comprise the developed method. First, physics-of-failure（PoF） models are utilized to model each failure mechanism. Then, interactions among failure mechanisms are modeled as a combination of three basic relations, competition, superposition and coupling. This is the reason why the method is referred to as ＂compositional method＂. Finally, the PoF models and the interaction model are combined to develop a deterministic model of the dependent failure behavior. As a demonstration, the method is applied on an actual spool and the developed failure behavior model is validated by a wear test. The result demonstrates that the compositional method is an effective way to model dependent failure behavior.