This work is mainly devoted to the properties of the active mass of the positive

electrode and the acid/water ratio during the manufacturing process. A field st
udy is carried out at the State Battery Manufacturing Company located in Baghdad
, to prepare batches of lead mono-oxide with predefined quantities of liquid add
itives (i.e. sulfuric acid and water). Quality control and laboratory routine an
alysis using X-ray diffraction, porosimeter and BET techniques, as well as densi
ty, penetration tests of residual lead content ware conducted during the batch p
rocess. After the assembling of the positive plates produced during this researc
h into the final product, final testing including electrical capacity and dry ch
arging were performed. It was concluded from the results obtained, that the effe
ctive H2SO4/H2O ratio and hence H2SO4/PbO ration and paste density with a/-PbO2,
are the limiting factors of the electrical capacity and durability of the batter
ies concerned.We will use the bearing failure data provided in Section 1.4.3, na
mely, the five failure times, ordered from the shortest to the longest, which ar
e: 9, 12, 13, 19 and 25 weeks. Entering these values into OREST provides the Wei
bull parameter estimates = 2.51 and ? = 17.78. A screen capture of the parameter
estimation is provided in Table 1.
Table 1. OREST Weibull Parameter Estimates
Using the values of = 2.51, ? = 17.78 we get the cost function depicted in Figur
e 5 and the age-based preventive replacement report shown in Table 2, from which
it is seen that the optimal preventive replacement age is 6.31 weeks. While thi
s preventive replacement age might seem small compared to the shortest observed
failure time of 9 weeks, the Weibull analysis has assumed that in practice a bea
ring failure could occur shortly after installation, and so a 2-parameter Weibul
l has been used. And furthermore the consequence of failure is quite severe ($1,
000) compared to the cost of a preventive replacement ($100).
It again can be stressed that software such as OREST enables many sensitivity ch
ecks to be undertaken so that one can establish a robust recommendation on the o
ptimal change-out time for an item.
1.5.3 Further Comments
This section has just dipped very briefly into one software package that can be
used to optimize the preventive
RF Jardine: page 3 RF
replacement times for a component. Others include RelCode developed by Hastings
initially in 1976, but regularly updated and Weibull++ (www.weibull.com). Hastin
gs (3) presents a case study that illustrates the use of RelCode.
Figure 5. OREST: Cost Optimization Curve
Table 2. OREST Age-Based Preventive Replacement Report
1.5.4 Problem
The educational version of OREST restricts the number of observations that can b
e analysed to 6 (failures plus suspensions). Also, it requires that the cost con
sequence of a failure replacement is $1,000, and for preventive replacement it i
s $100. All the following problems satisfy these constraints.
Heavy duty bearings in a steel forging plant have failed after the number of wee
ks of operation provided in Table 3.
(a) Use OREST to estimate the following Weibull parameters, , ?, Mean Life.
(b) The cost of Preventive Replacement is $100 and the cost of Failure Replaceme
nt is $1,000. Determine the optimal replacement policy.
Age at Failure (Weeks)
8
12
14
16
24
one unfailed at 24 weeks
Table 3. Bearing Failure Times
(c) The forge is cleaned and serviced once per week. Preventive replacement of t
he bearing can be carried out as part of this maintenance activity. At what age
should the bearing be replaced, given that, in addition to direct cost considera
tions, there is a safety argument for minimizing failure.

Support your conclusions by giving the cost and the proportions of failure repla
cements for some alternative policies.
(d) There are two similar forging plants and each works for 50 weeks per year. E
stimate the number of replacement parts required per year if the policy is preve
ntive replacement at age 6 weeks. How many failure replacements will occur per y
ear (steady state average) under this policy?
2. REPAIRABLE SYSTEMS
2.1 Repairable Systems
In Section 1 it has been assumed that renewal of the item occurred at the time o
f the maintenance action. If this is not acceptable then we need models applicab
le to repairable systems. A classic book addressing such problems is that of Asc
her and Feingold (4) where the concept of non-committal, happy and sad systems i
s introduced. Figure 6 illustrates these system descriptions using the five sets
of bearing failure data that were first introduced in Section 1.4.3. Before pro
ceeding to use the interval and age models presented, it is necessary that the f
ailures are what are termed identical and independently distributed, iid , namely t
he failure distribution of each new item is identical to the previous one, and t
hat each failure time is independent of the previous one. To check that is the c
ase a trend test (Laplace) can be made on the chronologically ordered failure ti
mes. Since the Ascher and Feingold book was published, many research ideas on ho
w best to handle the optimizationWhen we talk about algorithms, we usually mean
an algorithm (program)
written in a high-level programming language like Java or C. Such programming
languages allow us to use arithmetic expressions and many other complex
constructions. Most of these constructions, however, are not directly
hardware-supported inside a computer. Usually, only simple arithmetic operations
are implemented: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 1/x (plus
branching). Even division a/b is usually not directly supported, it is performed
as a sequence of two elementary arithmetic operations:One essential technique to
protect your web site from users is input validation,
which is an impressive term that doesn t mean much at all. The term
simply means that you need to check all input that comes from the user,
whether the data comes from cookies, GET, or POST data.
First, turn off register_globals in php.ini and set the error_level to the
highest possible value (E_ALL | E_STRICT). The register_globals setting stops
the registration of request data (Cookie, Session, GET, and POST variables) as g
lobal
variables in your script; the high error_level setting will enable notices for
uninitialized variables.
For different kinds of input, you can use different methods. For instance,
if you expect a parameter passed with the HTTP GET method to be an integer,
force it to be an integer in your script:7313939AFor Choice A, since the only da
ta given in Figure 6
are percent changes from year to year, there is no way
to compare the actual dollar amount of sales at the
stores for 2008 or for any other year. Even though
Store R had the greatest percent increase from 2006
to 2008, its actual dollar amount of sales for 2008
may have been much smaller than that for any of the
other four stores, and therefore Choice A is not necessarily
true.
in the question.
In addition to conventions, there are some assumptions
about numbers and geometric fi gures that
are used in the Quantitative Reasoning measure. Two
of these assumptions are (1) all numbers used are real
numbers and (2) geometric fi gures are not necessarily
drawn to scale. More about conventions and assumptions
appears in the publication Mathematical Conventions,

which is available at www.ets.org/gre/prepare.

Quantitative Reasoning Question
Types
The Quantitative Reasoning measure has four types
of questions:
Quantitative Comparison questions
Multiple-choice questions Select One Answer
Choice
Multiple-choice questions Select One or More
Answer Choices
Numeric Entry questions
Each question appears either independently as a discrete
question or as part of a set of questions called a
Data Interpretation set. All of