Author Archives: Murray Wiseman

MESH Use Cases – Knowledge Builder

Glossary Tree, hierarchy, knowledge base: The expandable list representing an Equipment type or Fleet and its Systems, Subsystems, Components, Functions, Failures, and Failure Modes. The elements:  Components, Subsystems, or Systems elements may be excluded from any branch of the tree. … Continue reading

Posted in LRCM, RCM | 15 Comments

Conditional failure probability, reliability, and failure rate

What is the relationship between the conditional failure probability H(t), the reliability R(t), the density function f(t), and the failure rate h(t)? In the article  Conditional probability of failure we showed that the conditional failure probability H(t) is: X is the failure … Continue reading

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Conditional probability of failure

The most powerful information sought by all maintenance engineers and managers boils down to the conditional failure probability. It is the probability of an item failing in an upcoming period of interest knowing that it is currently in an unfailed state. If you … Continue reading

Posted in Reliability Analysis, Theory and definitions | Tagged | 1 Comment

MTTF is the area under the reliability curve

The reliability curve, also known as the survival graph eventually approaches 0 as time goes to infinity. How do we show that the area below the reliability curve is equal to the mean time to failure (MTTF) or average life … Continue reading

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Random failure and the MTTF

Nowlan and Heap said that the (conditional) probability of occurrence of most failure modes is constant throughout the life of a component. They described this behavior as being that of “random” failure. What is the Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of a randomly … Continue reading

Posted in RCM, Theory and definitions | Tagged | 1 Comment