In this paper, we consider the replacement of a single unit with catastrophic failure mode. Besides replaced at a preset time, the unit is also replaced at failure time or if it encounters a production wait and its age has reached a threshold. The joint preventive maintenance interval and threshold optimization problem are formulated with the objective of minimizing the expected cost per unit time in long run. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the applicability of the model.
A series-parallel system was proposed with common bus performance sharing in which the performance and failure rate of the element depended on the load it was carrying. In such a system,the surplus performance of a sub-system can be transmitted to other deficient sub-systems. The transmission capacity of the common bus performance sharing mechanism is a random variable. Effects of load on element performance and failure rate were considered in this paper. A reliability evaluation algorithm based on the universal generating function technique was suggested. Numerical experiments were conducted to illustrate the algorithm.
The method of reliability is proposed for the investigation of thermal contact conductance （TCC） in this study. A new defini- tion is introduced, namely reliability thermal contact conductance （RTCC）, which is defined as the TCC value that meets the reliability design requirement of the structural materials under consideration. An experimental apparatus with the compensation heater to test the TCC is introduced here. A practical engineering example is utilized to demonstrate the applicability of the pro- posed approach. By using a statistical regression model along with experimental data obtained from the interfaces of the struc- tural materials GH4169 and K417 used in aero-engine, the estimate values and the confidence level of TCC and RTCC values are studied and compared. The results show that the testing values of TCC increase with interface pressure and the proposed RTCC model matches the test results better at high interface pressure.
