Scholars' Mine Doctoral Dissertations Student Theses and Dissertations Summer 2017 Reliability prediction in early design stages Yao Cheng Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations Part of the Mechanical Engineering Commons Department: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Recommended Citation Cheng, Yao, "Reliability prediction in early design stages" (2017). Doctoral Dissertations. 2593. https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/2593 This thesis is brought to you by Scholars' Mine, a service of the Missouri S&T Library and Learning Resources. This work is protected by U. S. Copyright Law. Unauthorized use including reproduction for redistribution requires the permission of the copyright holder. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RELIABILITY PREDICTION IN EARLY DESIGN STAGES by YAO CHENG A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 2017 Approved Dr. Xiaoping Du, Advisor Dr. Ashok Midha Dr. K. Chandrashekhara Dr. Serhat Hosder Dr. Xuerong Meggie Wen 2017 Yao Cheng All Rights Reserved iii PUBLICATION DISSERTATION OPTION This dissertation consists of the following four articles that have been published or submitted for publication as follows: Paper I, pages 7-60 have been submitted to Reliability Engineering & System Engineering. Paper II, pages 61-109 have been published in ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. Paper III, pages 110-154 have been accepted by ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. Paper IV, pages 155-189 have been accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 2017 ASME International Design and Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2017), August 6-9, 2017, Cleveland, Ohio, and submitted for publication to ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. This dissertation has been prepared in the style utilized by the Missouri University of Science and Technology. iv ABSTRACT In the past, reliability is usually quantified with sufficient information available. This is not only time-consuming and cost-expensive, but also too late for occurred failures and losses. For solving this problem, the objective of this dissertation is to predict product reliability in early design stages with limited information. The current research of early reliability prediction is far from mature. Inspired by methodologies for the detail design stage, this research uses statistics-based and physics-based methodologies by providing general models with quantitative results, which could help design for reliability and decision making during the early design stage. New methodologies which accommodate component dependence, time dependence, and limited information are developed in this research to help early accurate reliability assessment. The component dependence is considered implicitly and automatically without knowing component design details by constructing a strength-stress interference model. The time-dependent reliability analysis is converted into its time-independent counterpart with the use of the extreme value of the system load by simulation. The effect of dependent interval distribution parameters estimated from limited point and interval samples are also considered to obtain more accurate system reliability. Optimization is used to obtain narrower system reliability bounds compared to those from the traditional method with independent component assumption or independent distribution parameter assumption. With new methodologies, it is possible to obtain narrower time-dependent system reliability bounds with limited information during early design stages by considering component dependence and distribution parameter dependence. Examples are provided to demonstrate the proposed methodologies. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Xiaoping Du, for his persistent support, guidance, and encouragement, without which this dissertation would not have been possible. It is my great honor and valuable journey to work with him as his research assistant. His spirit of exploration in research, passion in teaching, modesty in life continually and convincingly inspires me in my future career and life. I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. Ashok Midha, Dr. K. Chandrashekhara, Dr. Serhat Hosder, and Dr. Xuerong Meggie Wen for their insightful comments and time commitment. I also would like to thank my labmates and friends, Dr. Zhen Hu, Mr. Liang Xie, Mr. Guannan Liu, Dr. Zhifu Zhu, Mr. Zhengwei Hu, Mr. Zhangli Hu, Ms. Lan Xu, Ms. Xueyang Chen, Ms. Laura Shafer, and Mr. Ye Cheng for their help during my study and life in Rolla. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Conrad and Mr. Michael Walmsley at Hussmann Corporation for their guidance and help during my internship. I also greatly appreciate the financial support from National Science Foundation through Grants CMMI 1300870 and CMMI 1562593, and the Intelligent Systems Center (ISC) at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Finally, I would like to express my eternal appreciation and love towards my husband Fangping Yuan, our coming baby, my parents, parents in law, and relatives for their unconditional love, encouragement, patience, and support no matter where I am. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PUBLICATION DISSERTATION OPTION .................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................................ xii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... xivv SECTION 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE ............................................................................... 3 1.3 ORGANIZATION OF DISSERTATION ........................................................ 4 PAPER I. RELIABILITY METHODOLOGIES FOR CONCEPTUAL DESIGN: WHAT IS DONE; WHAT IS NEEDED? ......................................................................................... 7 ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ 7 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 9 2. RELIABILITY METHODOLOGIES IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN .............. 12 2.1 RELIABILITY CONSIDERATION IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN ........ 12 2.2 METHODOLOGIES IN RELIABILITY ENGINEERING ..................... 13 2.3 BAYESIAN METHODOLOGIES ........................................................... 16 2.4 USE OF HERITAGE DATA .................................................................... 20 2.5 RELIABILITY METHODS FOR DESIGN CONCEPT EVALUATION......................................................................................... 21 2.6 FUNCTION MODELING METHODOLOGIES ..................................... 22 vii 2.7 PHYSICS-BASED RELIABILITY METHODOLOGIES....................... 27 3. OTHER METHODOLOGIES .......................................................................... 29 4. METHODOLOGIES SUMMARY ................................................................... 31 5. FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ............................................................ 33 5.1 NEW SYSTEM RELIABILITY PREDICTION METHODS FOR DEPENDENT COMPONENTS ............................................................... 33 5.2 THE USE OF PHYSICS-BASED RELIABILITY METHODO- LOGIES .................................................................................................... 35 5.3 APPLICATIONS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ......................... 37 5.4 ACCOMMODATION OF TIME- AND SPACE-DEPENDENT UNCERTAINTY ...................................................................................... 38 5.5 INFORMATION AGGREGATION ........................................................ 39 5.6 DECISION MAKING UNDER VARIOUS UNCERTAINTIES ............ 40 6. CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................... 42 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................... 44 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................... 45 APPENDIX ........................................................................................................... 56 II. SYSTEM RELIABILITY ANALYSIS WITH DEPENDENT COMPONENT FAILURES DURING EARLY DESIGN STAGE – A FEASIBILITY STUDY ........ 61 ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... 61 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 62 2. REVIEW OF SYSTEM RELIABILITY MODELING .................................... 68 3. SYSTEM RELIABILITY ANALYSIS WITH DEPENDENT