IND4345

Systems reliability

L Ma

4 points
* 24 lecture hours and 12 laboratory/project hours
* First semester
* Caulfield

Objectives To develop skills and understanding relating to the development of optimum levels of reliability for complex and advanced engineering systems.

Synopsis The economics of reliability; cost- benefit analysis and lifecycle costing, catastrophic failure. Configuration improvement; fault tree analysis, failure mode and effect analysis, reliability mathematics as the basis of the design function. The physics of failure approach; failure mechanisms, environmental engineering and life testing. Contractual reliability; planning, organising and controlling a program through its definition, design and development, production and operational stages. Testing for reliability; prediction, apportionment and statistical inference with constant and variable time schedules. Maintenance, monitoring and maintainability; data retrieval, data banks and further reliability improvement via the use of engineering statistics.

Assessment Examination (3 hours): 70%
* Mid-semester tests and assignments: 30%

Recommended texts

Cater A D S Mechanical reliability 2nd edn, Macmillan, 1986
Dhillon B S and Singh C Engineering reliability: New techniques and applications Wiley, 1988
Kececioglu D Reliability engineering handbook vols 1 and 2, Prentice-Hall
Roy R K A primer on the Tacachi method Nelson