Reliability, Maintainability and Risk : Practical Methods for Engineers Including Reliability Centred Maintenance and Safety-Related Systems

Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Part One Understanding Reliability Parameters and Costs -- The history of reliability and safety technology -- Failure data -- Hazardous failures -- Reliability and risk prediction -- Achieving reliability and safety-integrity -- The RAMS-cycle -- Contractual pressures -- Understanding terms and jargon -- Defining failure and failure modes -- Failure Rate and Mean Time Between Failures -- Interrelationships of terms -- The Bathtub Distribution -- Down Time and Repair Time -- Availability, Unavailability and Probability of Failure on Demand -- Hazard and risk-related terms -- Choosing the appropriate parameter -- Exercises -- A cost-effective approach to quality, reliability and safety -- Reliability and cost -- Costs and safety -- The cost of quality -- Part Two Interpreting Failure Rates -- Realistic failure rates and prediction confidence -- Data accuracy -- Sources of data -- Data ranges -- Confidence limits of prediction -- Overall conclusions -- Interpreting data and demonstrating reliability -- The four cases -- Inference and confidence levels -- The Chi-square Test -- Double-sided confidence limits -- Summarizing the Chi-square Test -- Reliability demonstration -- Sequential testing -- Setting up demonstration tests -- Exercises -- Variable failure rates and probability plotting -- The Weibull Distribution -- Using the Weibull Method -- More complex cases of the Weibull Distribution -- Continuous processes -- Exercises -- Part Three Predicting Reliability and Risk -- Basic reliability prediction theory -- Why predict RAMS? -- Probability theory -- Reliability of series systems -- Redundancy rules -- General features of redundancy -- Exercises -- Methods of modelling -- Block Diagrams and Repairable Systems -- Common cause (dependent) failure -- Fault Tree Analysis -- Event Tree Diagrams.