Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump in 1698. This was an important but imperfect step in the early development of steam engines. Savery’s pump was intended for dewatering mines, but it was more practical for other applications. Savery demonstrated the pump to the Royal Society of London in 1699. YouTube hosts several 3D animations and working scale models that are very interesting.
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When designing components consider fatigue or stress corrosion cracking. It’s important to be cognizant of the residual stresses in the component. Understanding residual pressure and its sources is important when making decisions about a component’s shape, features, alloy, and fabrication process.
Fatigue and stress corrosion cracking require the presence of tensile stresses on a component. When residual presures are tensile they add to the applied tensile pressure, reducing the life of a component. In fact, components sometimes fail due to stress corrosion cracking when residual stress is the only source of tensile stress.
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Product Validation Testing is a critical and expensive endeavor. The part build process must align with the latest prototype process (for Design Validation (DV)) or production process (for Product Validation (PV)) and be fully documented for posterity. Depending on the product and application, the validation test plan consists of a battery of tests, some of which are lengthy – often six months or more. Because of this, DV and PV test plans are invariably on the critical path for a customer program. Test failures that require fixing the design and repeating DV or PV jeopardize project timing and company profits. Further, they jeopardize the customer program along with your company’s reputation.
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It’s January 2020. I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications. I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way.
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Mother Nature And Father Time have together built well. What they have left behind lasts a long time without failure. Humans can run for 100 years with very little maintenance. Trees can run for thousands of years without maintenance. There are lessons for us to take and apply. The life on our world shows us how to achieve truly outstanding reliability and availability. Do you want a thing to last 20 years trouble-free all its life, maybe 50 years without a problem? By looking at what the Mother Nature And Father Time left behind you will find the answers.
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My not-so-dirty-little-secret, the Essence of Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Risk Assessment all at once…
I’m going to tell you a not-so-dirty-little secret about myself. I love No-Limit Texas Hold-‘Em poker.
I’m a tournament poker player – not cash. Every year at Thanksgiving, my husband and I journey to Las Vegas to indulge in my favorite hobby.
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Age-specific reliability of a standby system depends on components’ failure rates. Reliability computation is interesting when part failure rates depend on age, which is what motivates having a standby system. A Markov chain, approximates the age-specific reliability and availability, which are complicated to compute exactly, unless you assume constant failure rates. Why not use age-specific (actuarial) rates? They are Markov chain transition rates.
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Reactive chemicals refer to chemicals that can react with self or with other chemicals or contaminants leading to extremely high reaction rates. The high reaction rates in turn can lead to overpressure within the vessel and possible explosion. As a graduate student, I looked at behavior of reactive chemical hydroxylamine which was involved in an explosion at Concept Sciences facility in Allentown, PA.
Take a look at the following video on how hydroxylamine reacts upon addition of metal solution.
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One failure mechanism that I’m frequently asked about is hydrogen embrittlement of carbon and low-alloy steel. So, in this article I’ll discuss that topic.
Hydrogen embrittlement is the result of the absorption of hydrogen by susceptible metals resulting in the loss of ductility and reduction of load bearing capability. Sustained stress on an embrittled material can result in cracking and fracture at stresses less than the metal’s yield strength.
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I am often asked if there is a relationship between improved reliability and safety? There is certainly anecdotal evidence that suggests that there is a link. I’m sure anyone reading this can attest to similar beliefs from their work environment. But I was particularly interested to see if there was more definitive research that can back up these beliefs with hard data. I was able to find numerous articles that provided additional support data. However, I saw one from Ron Moore that really stood out to me. Ron has been a respected Reliability practitioner and consultant for many years. This article, which is posted all over the internet, shows more than just anecdotal conclusions on this relationship. Ron presents are a clear mathematical relationship that shows us that being more proactive and reliable also makes us safer.
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Ryan Chan of UpKeep authored a new book in which he presents some very smart concepts around information management. Here’s a video of a group discussion of those concepts and the launch. Participants include Ryan Chan (author of “Asset Operations”), Sanya Mathura, Ramesh Gulati, Vinny Cavello, and our own, James Reyes-Picknell.
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“Man measures time by happiness or sorrow, tranquility or torture. The one is past and gone so quickly that is seldom seized and savored while the other turns the hours into days and the weeks into years”. This was written by Major Pat Reid in “The Colditz Story” and, while it comes from a time of internment at a dark time in history the same is true today.
[Read more…]Reliability is something that can be created. It is the result of the standards, processes, and practices that are used. By removing causes of failures and controlling the factors that allow their creation, you proactively eliminate failure events. By eliminating failures, you deliberately create reliability. The reliability creating processes in the Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology let any operation or site reach the heights of world class operating asset reliability.
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Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe. – Benjamin Disraeli
The Inside FMEA series has completed the primary facilitation skills. The next few articles will cover special facilitation topics.
This article talks about the pros and cons of using a “scribe” to help with facilitation. [Read more…]
