Assignment on Terotechnology and Reliability Engineering for BSc Electrical Class Final

Year Students

Q1. (a) What are the causes of equipment failures?

(b State the objectives of applying maintainability engineering principles to engineering systems
and equipment. What are the results that will be expected when maintainability engineering
principles have been applied effectively to any product?
(c) List the methods used to improve equipment maintainability.
(d) Briefly discuss any five important design characteristics of maintainability.
Q2. (a) With the aid of a diagram, explain how the minimum cost of producing an item can be
arrived at by comparing reliability and maintenance costs. Explain the reasons why the cost
comparisons concept can be theoretical.
(b) Outline the factors that affect reliability and maintenance costs.
(c) Explain what you understand by Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA); use examples
to explain the terms used. State the major steps used in performing FMEA. Where is FMEA
used, and what are its advantages.
Q3. (a) Outline the role of design strategy to ensure the reliability of equipment. Describe any
three methods used to improve reliability and any two causes of unreliability.
(b)Define RCM and state the basic steps in the Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) process.
(c) Describe any three benefits offered by applying RCM process.
Q4. (a) Define equipment downtime. State and describe three main components of equipment
downtime.
(b) Explain the classifications of failures.
(c) State why production equipment are replaced. State three types of equipment replacement
decisions made by organizations. State and explain the reasons that lead to equipment
replacement.
(d) What are the factors to be considered when replacing equipment before the expiry of its
estimated life? What are the financial and technical factors used as guidelines for replacement
analysis.
Q5. (a) What are the specifications of maintainability? Differentiate between maintainability and
maintenance.
(b) State the objectives and results that will be expected when maintainability engineering
principles have been applied effectively to any product?
(c) With the aid of a sketch, describe a Cause and Effect Diagram (Analysis) and its associated
basic steps. Illustrate with an example.
Q6. (a) What is the objective of reliability testing? State the factors that are considered before
any reliability test is carried out. Briefly describe any five reliability tests.
(b) Define the following terms:
i) Failure,
ii) Downtime, and
iii) Availability
(c) Discuss the principal elements of the active repair time.
Q7. (a) Discuss the relationship between product reliability and maintainability and state how
they are related to MTTR and MTBF.
(b) With the aid of examples differentiate between active and standby redundancies. Outline the
facts to be considered before making a choice between active and standby redundancy.
(c) What devices should be installed to ensure standby equipment comes into operation when
required. What are the likely problems to be encountered with such devices? In choosing
between active and standby redundancy, what factors then should be considered.
(d) The figure below shows a manufacturing system composed of series and parallel units.
Calculate the reliability of the system.

Q8. (a) Outline three main measures that are used to express reliability in a market product
specification. What influences the measure to be chosen?
(b) Show with an example that the reliability of a product decreases with the increase of parts
that make up the equipment. How is this problem overcome, since most systems/equipment is
made of several parts?
(c) Describe how system reliability can be improved; list seven potential ways that can be used to
improve any system.
Q9. (a) Define Predicted reliability, and discuss why it is desirable. State generally how
reliability of a product is made. Under what circumstances can credible reliability predictions
are made for systems?
(b) Why do you think accelerated reliability testing is desirable? Describe the methods used to
accomplish accelerated reliability testing.
(c) What do you understand by Statistical Quality Control? Explain the differences between the
two components of statistical quality control.
(d) Give a definition of quality and outline the three types of quality
Q10. (a) Describe the LCC costing. State the steps involved in LCC costing. What are the
advantages and disadvantages of Life-cycle costing?
(b) Life expectancies of equipment and their relative perception may be difficult to forecast due
to premature obsolescence related to one or more issues and/or their interpretations under various
circumstances. State and explain these issues.
(c) A local company is planning to buy an automatic machine and has received bids from two
manufacturers. The costs and other data related the machines are given in the table below.
Determine which of the machines the company should purchase from the point of view of life
cycle cost.

Item Manufacturer A Manufacturer B

Ksh.,000 Ksh.,000
Acquisition cost 400 300
Annual operating cost 25 30
Expected cost of a failure 5 6
Expected useful life 20 years 20 years
Annual failure rate 0.05 failures per year 0.06 failures per year
Annual rate of increase in costs 5% 5%
Disposal cost 3 4

Q11. (a) What is the objective of reliability testing? State the factors that are considered before
any reliability test is carried out. State five reliability tests and briefly describe any three of them.
(b) Why do you think accelerated reliability testing is desirable? Describe the methods used to
accomplish accelerated reliability testing.
(c) A manufacturer of an air compressor with a modern design has tested its product to assess the
various maintenance performance measures. Fifty (50) air compressors were each put to test for a
running time of 1000 hours. It was found that there were totally 120 small and medium types of
failures during the testing phase; in total 1350 hours were lost in identifying the problem and
restoring it back to working condition. Based on this information, determine the following
measures:
i) Failure rate of compressor.
ii) MTBF.
iii) MTTR.
iv) Availability of compressor.
(b) A continuous-flow production line requires a product to be processed sequentially on 10
different machines. When a machine breaks down, the entire line must be stopped until the
failure is repaired. The average downtime of the line is 12 hours; this includes time spent waiting
for parts and maintenance personnel as well as time spent troubleshooting and fixing the failed
machine. Machine specifications require 0.99 reliability for each machine over an 8-hour
production run.
i) Determine
a) MTBF and state your assumption for the figure you give,
 b) The steady-state availability of the system,
ii) To meet production quotas, the line must maintain at least 0.92 availability. Discuss in detail
what the company can do to achieve this.
Q12. a) What is the MTBF of items? Can MTBF figures from different vendors be compared?
iii) b) What is the difference between observed, predicted and demonstrated MTBF?
iv) c) How do the manufacturing, packing and transport affect the reliability/predicted
reliability?
v) d) How many field failures can be expected during the warranty period if MTBF is
known?
13. a) A computer system has an exponential failure time density function

What is the probability that the system will fail after the warranty (six months or 4380 hours) and
before the end of the first year (one year or 8760 hours)?
b) Suppose in the production of lightbulbs 90% are good, in a random sample of 20 lightbulbs,
what is the probability of obtaining at least 18 good lightbulbs?
c) A manufacturer performs an operational life test on ceramic capacitors and finds they exhibit
constant failure rate with a value of 3x10-8 failure per hour. What is the reliability of a capacitor
at 104 hours?
d) A component has a normal distribution of failure times with µ = 2000 hours and σ = 100
hours. Find the reliability of the component and the hazard function at 1900 hours.
e) A part has a normal distribution of failure times with µ = 40000 cycles and σ = 2000 cycles.
Find the reliability of the part at 38000 cycles.
f) The failure time of a certain component is log normal distributed with µ = 5 and σ = 1. Find
the reliability of the component and the hazard rate for a life of 50 time units.
g) The failure time of a part is log normal distributed with µ = 6 and σ = 2. Find the part
reliability for a life of 200 time units.
14. a) The failure time of a certain component has a Weibull distribution with β = 4, θ = 2000,
and γ = 1000. Find the reliability of the component and the hazard rate for an operating time of
1500 hours.
b) The time to failure of a part has a Weibull distribution with 1/λ = 250 (measured in 105 cycles)
and γ =2. Find the part reliability at 106 cycles.
c) The time to failure of a component has a gamma distribution with α = 3 and β = 5. Determine
the reliability of the component and the hazard rate at 10 time-units.
d) A switch has two failure modes: fail-open and fail-short. The probability of switch open-
circuit failure and short-circuit failure are 0.1 and 0.2 respectively. Find the system reliability.
15. a) What is the difference between primary and secondary failures in a power system.
b) Explain the difference between first and second order failures in a power system.
c) Explain the difference between system and component redundancy, and give another example
of how redundancy can be created in a power system.
d) Give one example each of active and passive redundancy in a power system, and list some
disadvantages with active redundancy.
16. A large industry gets its electrical energy through two parallel lines, which earlier implied
redundancy. Recently, the industry doubled its production, and has since then an increased power
demand. Today, one line alone is not sufficient to feed the industry; a failure in one line causes
overload and a complete stop for the whole industry. You have been given the task to look at two
different investment alternatives, in order to solve this problem:
a) The more economical alternative would be to install a third line of the same sort as the other
two, and parallel to those, which would result in a so called 2/3 system. Such a system is in
working order as long as at least two of the three lines are in working order.
b) The second and more expensive alternative is to install a more powerful line parallel to the
other two; a line that alone can bear the entire load. As long as the new line is in order, this
system is working, and if not, it still works if both of the other lines are working at the same
time.
i) Find minimal paths and minimal cuts for the two alternatives.
ii) Make two, concerning reliability equivalent, network models – one for each system.
Part from the results in (a).
iii) Find the structure function for each alternative. (In fundamental form.)
iv) Suppose that all lines have probability p to be in operation. For each alternative, write
the probability, expressed in p, for the system to be in operation.
v) Suppose that p=0.99 and that every hour of down time costs the company KES
100,000. How much lower must the average annual cost (including all costs, such as
loans, write-off costs etc.) for the first alternative be, in order for this to be profitable?
vi) Now suppose that failures occur with a yet smaller probability, but that they on the
other hand are more expensive. The industry would like to have an estimation of how
long it will take until the first failure occurs (mean time to failure) for the two
alternatives. Each line is supposed to have a failure frequency of 0.02 failures/year.
How many more years, expressed in percent, should it in average take before a failure
occurs in the more expensive system, compared to the economic one? (Broken lines
are not repaired.)

17. An important node in a power distribution network is fed through two parallel cables. The
cables are so badly placed, that every time a repair work has to be done, there is a cost of KES 100
000 for each cable that has to be repaired. Furthermore, if only one cable is broken, there is always
a risk that the unbroken cable breaks during the reparation of the broken one. Therefore, the grid
owner does not take any actions as long as at least one of the cables is working. When both are
broken, there is an interruption that is estimated to cost the grid owner KES 300 000. Each cable
is supposed to have a failure frequency of 0.1 failures/year.
a) How much does this strategy cost the company in average per year?
Suppose now that the grid owner is considering a new strategy, where a broken cable is repaired
immediately. At every reparation, there is however a risk of 10 %, that the unbroken cable is
destroyed by the reparation work. Despite the new strategy, there is still the risk that both cables
break before the reparation is started. Suppose that this happens in average every 150 years.
b) Would a change of strategy be economically profitable?
c) The estimation of the risk that an unbroken cable is destroyed at reparation of the other
cable is very uncertain. How high must that risk be, in order to make the two strategies
equally profitable? Suppose that the risk today is 20 %, but decreases by 1 % per year,
due to improved technology. In how many years should the company change strategy?

18. Suppose that you have 2 components, component a and component b, which independently of
each other can be in operation or out of operation. They have different and constant reparation
frequencies and failure frequencies. Suppose that two events (reparation or failure) can not occur
at the same time.
a) What do the state transition diagram and the transition rates for this system look like?
b) Which is the steady-state distribution for the different states?
c) Compute the availability of the system, for both a series connection and a parallel
connection.
19. A system of two components in series fails when one of the components breaks. The
components have the same constant failure rate and reparation rate, and when one of them breaks,
they can not be repaired at the same time. The failure rates are for both components 1/500, and the
reparation rates are 1/10.
a) How high is the asymptotic availability?
b) Calculate MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) for this system.
c) How long is the expected time when both components are broken, between two visits in the
state at which the system is working?
d) Suppose that one component is broken. How big is then the chance that this component is
repaired compared to the chance that the other component breaks?
20. a) What is the source of Power Quality problems?
b) How can Power Quality affect the facility electrical distribution system?
c) The basics of electrical preventive maintenance and its implications for controlling costs
d) What is the best way to maintain an electrical system?
21. a) What Is Electrical Reliability? What are the high cost of electrical unreliability?
b) What are the benefits and Main Factors of Reliability in electrical systems?
c) Briefly describe five methods an electrical engineer can use to increase or maintain reliability
for electrical systems.
d) What can you do as a design engineer to minimize single point failures in
the electrical power system?
Q22. a) What is the use of reliability predictions? At, which, stage is the reliability known.
b) What causes the discrepancy between the reliability prediction and the field failure report?
c) What are the conditions that have a significant effect on the reliability?
Q23. a) With the help of a sketch, explain the type of questions that a reliability theory is expected
to answer as concerned the design and manufacture of a quality product.
b) The figure below shows the Exponential Reliability Function whose MTBF is 10,000 hours;
i) Give expressions for the reliability R(t) at any given time t, and Failure rate, , in
failures per hour or cycle.
ii) Use the expressions in (i) to find the reliability at t = 10,000 hours
iii) If a system has four components in series with MTBF of 5,000, 6,000, and 4,500 and
2,000 hours, respectively, what is the combined system MTBF and the reliability of
the system at 200 hours of operation using the expressions.
c) Describe the advantages of using Weibull Analysis and show on a graph how it is used in
analyzing life data.
d) State an expression for the Weibull distribution and show the variation of the shape parameter
β on a bathtub curve.
e) The failure time of a certain component has a Weibull distribution with β = 4, θ = 2000, and γ
= 1000. Using the expression for the Weibull distribution find the reliability of the component
and the hazard rate for an operating time of 1500 hours.
Q24. a) Do we have less service visits when using power supplies in parallel as
i) 4+1 redundancy
ii) 1+1 redundancy
b) Do we have less system failures when using power supplies in parallel as 4+1 redundancy?