Reliability of Non Repairable Systems
Duty Cycles
Components of a system may not operate continuously during a system's mission. To model this, a
factor called the Duty Cycle (dc) is used.
Consider a system with three components: A, B and C in series. Assume that all three components
follow a Weibull failure distribution with the parameters βA = 1.5, ηA = 5000 for A, βB = 2.5, ηB = 3000 for
B and βC = 2, ηC = 4000 for C. Determine the reliability of the system for 1500 hr of operation given that
it has worked for 1000 hr since installation. Assume the duty cycles to be 30%, 50% and 100% for A, B
and C.
How much will be the error if we ignore duty cycles ?
Competing Failure Modes
Often, a group of products will fail due to more than one failure mode.
One can take the view that the products could have failed due to any one of the possible failure
modes, but since an item cannot fail more than one time, there can only be one failure mode for
each failed product.
In this view, the failure modes compete as to which causes the failure for each particular item.
This can be viewed as a series system reliability model, with each failure mode composing a block
of the series system.
n
R(t ) RFM i
i 1
Reliability and hazard rate functions of mixed population
The reliability of a component drawn at random from a mixed population composed of n types of
failure subpopulations is its reliability, R1(T), given that the component is from subpopulation 1, or
N1/N plus its reliability, R2(T), given that the component is from subpopulation 2, or N2/N and ………
so on
N1 N N
f (t ) f1 (t ) 2 f 2 (t ) ........... n f n (t )
N N N
h(t) = f(t) / R(t) Where, S (Ni / N) = 1
N1 N N
R(t ) R1 (t ) 2 R2 (t ) ........... n Rn (t )
N N N
Conditional reliability and hazard rate functions
N1 N N
R1 (T t ) 2 R2 (T t ) ........... n Rn (T t )
R(t | T ) N N N
N1 N N
R1 (T ) 2 R2 (T ) ........... n Rn (T )
N N N
Plot this function for a mixed population with components having exponential Time To
Failure (TTF) distribution.
Conditional Reliability function
Consider a component drawn at random from a mixed population composed of 2 types of failure
subpopulations with failure rate λ1 = 0.001 given that the component is from subpopulation 1,
and λ2 = 0.005 given that the component is from subpopulation 2. Proportion of type 1 and type 2
population components are 0.8 and 0.2 respectively.
Plot the hazard rate function.
How will the function look like if the proportions become 0.2 and 0.8 respectively?
Hazard Rate of individual populations
Sub-population 1 Sub-population 2
0.006
0.0012
0.005
0.001
0.004
0.0008
Hazard rate
Hazard rate
0.003
0.0006
0.002
0.0004
0.001
0.0002
0
0 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Time Time
Effective Hazard Rate as a function of mixed population
0.002 0.0045
0.0018 p1 p2 0.004 p1 p2
0.0016 0.0035
0.8 0.2 0.2 0.8
0.0014
0.003
Hazard rate
Hazard rate
0.0012
0.0025
0.001
0.002
0.0008
0.0006 0.0015
0.0004 0.001
0.0002 0.0005
0 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Time Time
p1 = proportion of strong population
p2 = proportion of weak population
Conditional Reliability function: Homework
Consider a component drawn at random from a mixed population composed of 2 types of failure
subpopulations with same Shape factor, b = 3 and h1 = 1000 hr given that the component is from
subpopulation 1, and h2 = 500 hr given that the component is from subpopulation 2. Proportion
of type 1 and type 2 population components are 0.8 and 0.2 respectively.
Plot the hazard rate and conditional reliability function.
How will the functions look like if the proportions become 0.2 and 0.8 respectively? Plot from 100
to 2000 hr with 500 hr interval.
Effective Hazard Rate as a function of multiple failure mode
Each failure mode has its own
distribution and hence its own
hazard rate.
The observed hazard rate is a
consequence of hazard rate
functions of all failure modes.
QA
