Slide 1: Hello everyone.

We are team 5 and our topic for discussion today is FMEA and Design
for reliability.

Slide 2 :
So now for a brief introduction to the topic at hand. What exactly is FMEA? It is an examination
or an inspection of what can fail and how that failure can lead to hazards and study the
resources which we can use to mitigate the risks

But how exactly? To codify it in a structured format, the initial step is to identify the root cause of
the failure mode, along with its severity, probability and detectability. Then we create a plan of
action to keep the people safe.

And for the question of when, it is done early in the design process in order to facilitate the
inclusion of robust protections. A key benefit is the factor of 10 rule which is that early design
improvement minimizes the expensive cost of modification which precisely was the issue in the
ford pinto affair that we will see in the next slide

Slide 3: Now gentlemen, a short view back to the past. The history of FMEA is quite recent. It
can be traced to the military standard of the United States in 1949. Once it was recognized to
have considerable benefits, NASA too adopted this methodology as a planning technique for
their projects such as Apollo, Viking and Voyager. They proved to be vital for the success of
these missions.
In the industry, it was first utilized by the automotive industry by the mid 1970s. This was after
the Pinto affair and Ford had to take safety and regulatory considerations. Thus, it did take
some time before coming to use.

Slide 4 : So what exactly was the Pinto case? Ford Pinto was a subcompact car that was
known to burst into flames when struck from behind. These vulnerabilities led to one of the
biggest recalls at the time and Ford’s reputation suffered greatly.
On delving deeper into the issue we find many glaring design and technical flaws. For example,
the fuel tank was placed between the bumper and rear axle. Also, the tyres punctured at speeds
greater than 31 mph causing fires. However the tooling ( the process of building the different
types of components and machinery) was already complete before the flaws were discovered
and redesigning was deemed too expensive. This case propelled Ford to change their outlook
and they started using FMEA in their design process.

Slide 5: FMEA stands for failure modes and effect analysis. A failure mode can be described as
the manner in which the product or operation fails to meet the requirements. In this sense, a
failure mode should be a simple description of the failure without stating the cause behind it and
the effect after it. Mainly, the causes are the rational reasons that can lead to the occurring of
the failure mode, and the effects represent the negative impacts if the failure mode is
materialized.
Slide 6 : Let’s look at some examples of failure modes in the compressor subsystem of the car.
The parts of this subsystem include compressor, pipes, pressure control and relief valve. The
failure modes of a compressor include external leaks, ruptures, failing to start, etc .Since this
subsystem consists of fluid flow, these failure modes are common to other parts as well. The
pressure control has failure modes such as failing with no low or high output signal.

Slide 7 : An example always helps so let's look at a sample design FMEA. A design fmea has
the objective of uncovering potential failures with product design that causes malfunctions. On
the other hand, a process fmea uncovers potential failures that can affect product quality,
process reliability, etc.

Slide 8: Here is the sample design fmea. The columns number from 9 to 22.
The 9th column is for the function of the item which herein is a front door whose function is to
ingress to and egress from the vehicle. Factually speaking, this column describes the proper
functioning of the sub-system relative to the system as a whole.

The 10th column stands for potential failure modes. This column describes the failure that
occurs within the subsystem which in this example is the corroded interior door panels.

The 11th column is about potential effects of failures which can be defined in terms of what the
customers might notice or experience, remembering that the customer may be an internal
customer or an end user. Herein, it could be noise, erratic operation, etc.

The next column is about severity. Severity is to be based on the worst case potential harm that
could result from the failure effects described. This is harm to persons, not equipment.
One way of looking at this is to ask what response would be required for the injuries ranging
from no treatment to medical treatment to permanent effects to dealing with the loss of one or
more lives
The classification column may be used to classify any special product characteristics for
components that require additional process controls.
The 14th column is about the potential causes of failure which documents indications of a
design weakness, the consequence of which is the failure mode. They may include
overstressing, poor environment protection, etc.
Next column is Occurrence which is the likelihood that a specific cause will occur. It is a ranking
number rather than the actual likelihood of occurrence

The 16th column is about the current design controls. This lists the activities which will assure
design adequacy for failure mode and cause under consideration.

The 17th column is detection. The Detection Factor is an evaluation of how well the design in
question can recognize and react to the failure. The primary intent of this factor is to evaluate
the system’s automatic responses
The next column is the risk priority number RPN. This is the product of severity * occurrence *
detection. This is a measure of design risk. The higher the rpn, the greater the risk. However, in
general practice, regardless of the resultant RPN, special attention should be given when
severity is high.
Next is the recommended actions. The intent of any action is to reduce any one or all of the
occurrence, severity and detection rankings. Some actions include revised test plan, revised
material specification, etc.

Slide 9 :
Now that FMEA is understood, let’s look at how we mitigate these failure modes. One way is
what is called factor of safety

A good design engineer has to consider a lot of factors while designing a component. But
perhaps safety is the most important one.

So in general Factor of safety can refer to 2 things,

1st is the actual load bearing capacity of the component and
2nd is the required safety margin of any structure by law or the design requirements.

Factor of safety can be calculated as the ratio of Ultimate or the maximum Stress to the working
stress , so suppose you have a component which typically experiences stresses of 200 giga
Pascal but it can withstand stresses upto 400 gigaPascal, so in this case factor of safety is said
to be 2.

Now the question comes, how do we decide the FOS while designing. Well, it depends on many
factors some of which are the risks involved in using the part and the additional manufacturing
cost one has to incorporate per component

Slide 10:

Here are some examples of factors of safety used in various places just to give you all a feel.

So we see the aircraft components have less FoS than wheels and ropes, this can be counter
intuitive as one may think that an aircraft involves a very high level of risk, but we must not
forget that aircrafts are finely controlled as compared to ropes and wheels. Plus if we increase
FoS in aircraft components its weight and cost of manufacturing will also increase,which is not
viable.

Bolts have to withstand large loads with stress concentrations which can cause failure, therefore
explaining it’s high FOS

Wheels, hooks and ropes need to survive continuous loads (might be very high) , unforeseen
environmental conditions, fatigue, thus a big safety margin is required.
Engines, boilers need to survive very high thermal loads, shocks, cyclic loads hence high FoS

Now that we have defined FMEA and how FOS can be used to mitigate it, we’ll look at how to
make the product reliable.

Slide 11:
Design for reliability is the process describing the entire set of tools which help in increasing the
reliability of a product starting right from the early design stage to the date when product is no
longer used.

DFR takes all these factors into consideration:

1. Failure mechanisms present in environment
2. Failure modes and failure rates of product
3. Lifetime of product
4. cost of maintenance
5. Availability
6. Rigorous testing

Slide 12: These are the types of tools used in DFR.

The first one is life data analysis, it refers to the study and modeling of observed product lives
which is the time a product can be operated before failure, this data is obtained from the
marketplace.

Physics of failure refers to the way physical and chemical phenomena under working conditions
can cause failure of the product.

Accelerated life testing refers to the process of subjecting the product to conditions harsher than
the normal working conditions to analyze the possible failures in a short period of time.

Reliability growth is analyzing the growth in product’s lifetime over time to understand the design
to lifetime relationship

This is a statistical analysis tool used to predict the future warranty claims based on the
previous data.

FMEA is another tool used in the DFR process

Customer feedback is another important aspect to improving the DFR of a product

Slide 13:
Now that we understand the types of tools used in DFR, let’s look at how to quantify DFR.
Engineering designs often neglect the uncertain nature of the material properties, the
dimensions of the components and the externally applied load. Quantifying DFR would ensure
data driven design decisions which are especially important in cases of critical applications like
aircraft design.

What is reliability? Reliability for a device or component can be defined as the probability of it
working properly without experiencing any failures for some specified period of time under given
operating conditions.

Okay we got the feeling of what reliability is, but we can’t do anything with only the definition, we
need The math.
So let’s define the The reliability as R(t) and The probability of failure as F(t) ,
Either a component will fail during the working time or it will not fail so the probability sum of
both will be 1. Thus R(t) + F(t) = 1.

Furthermore, considering a typical test for reliability with No number of parts, and Ns(t) and Nf(t)
are respectively the number of parts surviving and failing till time t, we can write that
Ns(t) + Nf(t) = No

Furthermore we can say that R(t)(Reliability)= Ns(t)/No and F(t) = Nf(t)/No

Hence, the instantaneous failure rate can be anticipate as the number of failures per unit time
for the total number of parts exposed during time t and given as,
Let’s define the instantaneous failure rate h(t) = d(Nf(t)/d divide by No.

where f(t) refers to the typical nature of the statistical frequency distribution of time to failure. f(t)
can be written as f(t) = dF(t)/dt

In a statistical form, the instantaneous failure rate, h(t), can be written as the probability that a
given test item has survived till time t1 and would fail between time interval let’s say t1 and t1 +
dt1 , and can be expressed as,
h(t)=f(t)/[1-F(t), we can write 1 - F(t) as R(t) so, h(t) will be f(t) / R(t) and as we can write f(t) as
dF(t)/dt and F(t) is equal to 1-R(t) so we can write f(t) as minus dR(t)/dt .
So, h(t)dt = -dR(t)/R(t), thus R(t)(Reliability) = Exponential of negative integral from 0 to t h(t)dt.
For a given constant value of failure rate can be used to estimate the reliability of a test
component.

Slide 14: As u can see The failure curve can be divided into three parts. The first part is a
decreasing failure rate, known as early failures that may occur due to design errors,
manufacturing defects, or installation errors. These early failures can be minimized by improving
the production quality control, and subjecting the parts to a proof test before their actual service
with the customers.
As time passes the system stabilizes and these early failures leave the system leading to a
constant failure rate in the second part, which is also referred to as the random failure zone.
Here the failures occur because of random overloads or random faults having no pattern at all.
Mechanical components usually do not exhibit a region of constant failure rate.

After a stipulated long time, the mechanical components and materials begin to age and wear
out and this accelerates the failure rate leading to an accelerated failure rate in the third (last)
part. The failure curve is also referred to as the bathtub curve due to its shape.