To give students an understanding of the principles of reliability evaluation and the influence on maintenance strategies, costs and replacement decisions. To equip students with abilities to perform environmental audits on products and processes. To present environmental impact assessment and ecological foot-printing of products and processes used in the critical realisation of current unsustainable engineering trends.

Fundamentals: concepts and formulae, hazard rate calculations, use of redundancy and considerations of implications on costs of purchase, operation and maintenance, system reliability using block diagram reduction and state transition analysis techniques. Reliability estimation: from observed failure characteristics, use of Weibull distribution, Weibull Hazard Plotting for censored data, Markov analysis including systems subject to repair. System availability and factors affecting this. Prediction of repair times. Part failure rate analysis, data sources, failure modes, effects and criticality analysis, influence of environment and operational modes, identification of areas for effort to improve reliability and techniques for doing so, load-strength relationships and [application of simulation] to this. Case study. Acceptance testing for reliability, confidence levels. Environmental testing: methods and instrumentation, effects of heat, humidity, corrosion, mechanical hazards eg shock loading and vibration, consideration of packaging and mounting, burn-in procedures. Fault-tree analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Safety. Replacement decision-making examples of deterministic and probabilistic analyses including [modelling and simulation], use of discounted cash-flow techniques, MAPI analysis, influence of depreciation and tax. Optimisation of the lifetime of products shifting towards a cradle-to-cradle concept, combined with a Product Lifecycle Analysis (PLCA). Packaging design and analysis. Redesign and reengineering to minimise parts and fasteners. Transport, distribution and reverse logistics. Renewable materials and energy, repair, reuse and recycling. Materials selection for sustainability.

1. Define reliability and discuss its importance in manufacturing. 2. Calculate component reliability (or probability of failure), failure rate, and/or mean time to failure, when given details of the PDF of a componentÆs time to failure. 3. Calculate the reliability, failure rate and MTTF of systems (including redundant components) when given details of system configurations and component reliability. 4. Use Markov analysis to determine system reliability or the availability of systems subject to repair. 5. Use time dependent failure models, specifically Weibull, normal and lognormal distributions, to predict reliability. 6. Use Safety Analysis techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis, FMEA and Event Trees to evaluate the reliability of systems (including human error) and propose methods for improving reliability. 7. Evaluate the impact of maintenance on component/system reliability and determine when a maintenance strategy is appropriate. 8. Explain the impacts of products and processes on the environment 9. Undertake a series of environmental audits and ecological footprint assessments 10.Produce a core study report on the environmental sustainability of a selected product

Display an understanding of issues relating to environmental sustainability, EMSs and also as to their application

Not Applicable

Students will learn through lectures with a large number of problems interactively solved throughout the lectures. Students will also sit a series of short tests to ensure that they have understood and are up to date with the material. Thereby demonstrating and ensuring that the students are knowledgeable and understand the key concepts of reliability technology in a practical setting. Students will participate actively in lab sessions and through reverse engineering concepts thereby developing their collaborative and creative graduate attributes.