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PurdueX: Reliability in Engineering Design

Learn the methods of reliability analysis and reliability-driven design of mechanical and electronic systems.

17 weeks
7–9 hours per week
Instructor-paced
Instructor-led on a course schedule
This course is archived
Future dates to be announced

About this course

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The course is aimed at providing an engineering view (as opposed to a purely statistical view or a management view) of reliability analysis as well as reliable product design. The goal is to make the student familiar with both the statistical tools as well as the failure physics that enable one to model time to failure of products and to use such models during design phase to ensure reliable product designs.

At a glance

  • Institution: PurdueX
  • Subject: Engineering
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Prerequisites:

    Undergraduate mechanics of materials course. A learner should understand (or be willing to learn) the concepts of shear force, bending moment, and stress.

  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills:Physics, Engineering Design Process, Reliability Analysis, Product Design

What you'll learn

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What You Will Learn:

  • Probability rules and conditional probabilities
  • Expectation and variance of continuous functions and their manipulation
  • Failure rate modeling
  • Normal, lognormal, exponential, Weibull, binomial and Poisson distributions
  • Reliability, mean time to failure and availability
  • Data fitting and reliability estimation
  • Multimodal distributions and mixed multiple failure mechanisms
  • Reliability block diagrams
  • Monte Carlo simulation
  • Load-strength interference and probabilistic design
  • First-order reliability methods
  • Accelerated tests and acceleration factors
  • Time to failure modeling for selected failure mechanisms in mechanical and electronic systems

Week 1:

  • Introduction and Overview
  • Rules of Probability

Week 2:

  • Probability Examples
  • Conditional Probability

Week 3:

  • Expectations and Variance Definition
  • Expectation and Variance of Continuous Functions
  • Normal Distribution PDF and CDF

Week 4:

  • Load-Strength Interference Theory
  • Load-Strength Interference Examples

Week 5:

  • Material Degradation and Time to Failure Modeling
  • Practice Problems for Test 1

Week 6:

  • Lognormal Distribution, Reliability, Hazard Rate and MTTF
  • Test 1

Week 7:

  • Exponential Distribution and Examples of MTTF Estimation
  • Weibull Distribution

Week 8:

  • Multimodal Distributions and Mixed Multiple Failure Mechanisms
  • Goodness of Fit

Week 9:

  • Binomial and Poisson Distributions
  • Practice Problems for Test 2

Week 10:

  • Reliability Block Diagrams
  • Test 2

Week 11:

  • Monte Carlo Simulation
  • Uncertainty in Geometry, Load and Strength
  • Covariance and Correlation

Week 12:

  • Covariance and Correlation Examples
  • First Order Reliability Methods Introduction

Week 13:

  • First Order Reliability Methods Examples
  • Reliability Review During Design

Week 14:

  • Accelerated Degradation
  • Accelerated Testing and Acceleration Factors
  • Practice Problems for Test 3

Week 15:

  • Time to Failure Models for Mechanical Systems
  • Test 3

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners residing in one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. edX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

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