Reliability Evaluation and Reliability Prediction Models

Abstract

Chapter 5 introduced the basic maintenance terminology and nomenclature related to a generic item as a part, component, device, subsystem, functional unit, piece of equipment, or system that can be individually considered. It is worth remembering the following definition of availability in accordance with the European standards and specifications: “ability of an item to be in a state to perform a required function under given conditions at a given instant of time or during a given time interval, assuming that the required external resources are provided.” Availability, such as reliability and maintainability, refers to a production system as a combination of different functions, parts, and basic components whose failure and repair behaviors can be known or unknown. In particular, these behaviors can be eventually based on the availability of historical data of failures and repairs, whose statistical evaluation can effectively support the prediction of future and stochastic behaviors for new equipment and/or already operating production systems and components. What about models and methods for reliability evaluation engineering? This chapter also discusses the elementary reliability configurations of a system in order to introduce the reader to the basic tools to evaluate complex systems, i. e., based on complex configurations, as deeply discussed and exemplified in the next chapter.