TOLERANCE DESIGN AND PRODUCT

RELIABILITY
BY

Group 1
Yakub, Yusuf Babaita

08/30gc098

Nafiu, Adetokun

15/68GI003

Oba, Abdulrasheed Eleran

07/30gc106

Course code: ELE 803

Course title: Advance Reliability Engineering

Submitted to:

Professor Y.A Adediran

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
University of Ilorin.

November,
2016
TABLE OF CONTENT

Title
page.............................................................................................
...... i
1.0
Introduction..................................................................................
............ 1
1.1 Product
reliability......................................................................................
1
1.2 Reliability and bathtub
curve.....................................................................2
2.0 Tolerance
design........................................................................................4
2.1 Tolerance design for
resistor.....................................................................5
2.2 Calculating resistor value and
tolerance....................................................6
2.3 Tolerance of a mechanical
product............................................................7
2.4 Causes of variation in
component..............................................................7
3.0
Conclusion....................................................................................
...............8
References...................................................................................
.....................9
2

1.0

INTRODUCTION
Systems fail for many reasons. The system might have been

specified wrongly, leading to an incorrect design, or the system might

contain a fault that manifests only under certain conditions that were not
tested. The environment may cause a system to fail, ageing component
may cease to work properly, therefore it is relatively easy to visualize and
understand random failure caused by ageing hardware. It is more difficult
to grasp how failures might be caused by incorrect specification, design
flaws, substandard implementation, poor testing, and operator errors.
A good system design requires a careful study of design, failures,
causes of failures, and system response to failure. Such a study should be
carried out in detail before the design begins and must remain part of the
design process. Proper design of tolerant system begins with requirement
specification. A designer must analyze the environment and determine the
failures that must be tolerated to achieve the desired level of reliability.[1]

1.1

Product Reliability
3

Reliability is the probability that a product will continue to work

normally over a specified interval of time, under specified conditions. For
example, the mouse on your computer might have a reliability of 0.990 (or
99%) over the next 1000 hours. It has a 99% chance of working normally
during this time, which is obviously the same as saying it has a 1% chance
of being faulty. A more reliable product spends less of its time being
maintained, so there is often a design trade-off between reliability and
maintainability. Reliability is extremely design-sensitive. Very slight
changes to the design of a component can cause profound changes in
reliability, which is why it is important to specify product reliability and
maintainability targets before any design work is undertaken. This in turn
requires early knowledge of the anticipated service life of the product, and
the degree to which parts of the product are to be made replaceable. For
example, a ballpoint pen could be:

1. Disposable.
It will be reliable until the ink is exhausted, at which point it is
discarded. Neither the
ink nor parts of the pen body are replaceable, so the pen body needs to
last no longer than the ink. The product has a short service life.
2. Refillable.
It will be designed for routine replacement of ink (usually as an ink
cartridge), but pen
body parts will not be replaceable. The body must be reliable enough to
outlast the specified number of ink replacement cycles. The product has a
moderate service life.
3. Repairable (fully maintainable).
The pen is refillable and all body parts are replaceable. The product
has an extendable service life (until the spare parts are no longer
available). Note that product service life is not the same as market life.
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The market life (also known as the design life) of a product is the length of
time the product will continue to be sold in the shops and supported
before being withdrawn.[2]

1.2

Reliability & The Bathtub

Curve
Figure1.0 shows the bathtub curve which characterize the life circle
of an engineering product. It is divided into three phases which are
premature failure phase, normal service phase and wear out phase.

figure1.0

Early Life /premature life

This is the design stage where manufacturers use many methods to
ensure the integrity of design. Some of the design techniques include:
burn in (to stress devices under constant operating conditions); power
cycling (to stress devices under the surges of turn-on and turn-off);
temperature cycling (to mechanically and electrically stress devices over
the temperature extremes); vibration; testing at the thermal destruct
limits; highly accelerated stress and life testing; etc. All of these methods
5

are designed to bring us to the useful life period before the customer sees
the product.
Normal service/Useful Life
As the product matures, the weaker units fail, the failure rate
becomes nearly constant, and devices have entered what is considered
the normal life period. This period is characterized by a relatively constant
failure rate. The length of this period is also referred to as the system
life of a product or component. It is during this period of time that the
lowest failure rate occurs. Notice how the amplitude on the bathtub curve
is at its lowest during this time. The useful life period is the most common
time frame for making reliability predictions.
Wear out phase
As components begin to fatigue or wear out, failures occur at
increasing rates. Wear out in industrial electronic devices is usually
caused by the breakdown of electrical components that are subject to
physical wear and electrical and thermal stress. It is this area of the graph
that the MTBFs calculated in the useful life period no longer apply. A
product with an MTBF of 10 years can still exhibit wear out in two years.
No parts count method can predict the time to wear out of components.
Industrial electronic devices are designed so that the useful life extends
past the design life (when the device is obsolete). This way wear out
should never occur during the useful life of a device.

2.0

Tolerance Design
If we could design a product that could be replicated exactly,

including every element of the product, we would not need tolerances.

Any part would work with any assembly. We would simply specify the
dimension required. Instead, variation happens, widths, lengths, weights,
hardness, and any measure you deem worth specifying, will vary from one
part to the next. Manufacturing processes impact some amount of
variation between each item produced. In many cases the variation is
acceptable for the intended function. In some cases the variation is
unacceptably large and leads to failures. When the design does not
account for the variation, hole will not align, component will not fit, and
performance will be poor.[3]
The term 'Tolerance' can be defined as the permissible deviation of a
dimension from the specified basic size. Tolerance is the difference
between the maximum and minimum limits. This can be express as upper
and lower limits or an allowable amount above and below a nominal
dimension. This range of allowable dimension is the 'tolerance band'. The
larger the difference between the upper and lower limits, the larger the
tolerance band which is consider as a loose tolerance while the smaller
the difference between the upper and lower limits, the lower the tolerance
band and it is consider as a tight tolerance. If a part is manufactured but
has dimensions that are out of tolerance, then it is not usable. Below are
some terms used in tolerance
Basic value: this is the original dimension or value of a
component
Lower deviation: this is the difference between the minimum
possible value or dimension and the basic value
Upper deviation: this is the difference between the maximum
possible value or dimension and the basic size.

2.1

Tolerance Design for a Resistor

Resistors are in a range of different resistance values from fraction

of an ohm to millions of ohms. The resistance value, tolerance, and

wattage rating are generally printed on to the body of the resistor as
numbers or letters when the resistor body is big enough to read the print
such as large power resistors. But when the resistor is small in size, a
colour band is used to represent the resistance and its tolerance value. A
resistor can be represented by four, five, six colour band in which the last
colour represents the tolerance value. In this paper we shall study how to
calculate the value of a four colour band resistor and its tolerance. The
figure below shows a 4 band colour resistor and colour code table.[5]

figure2.0

2.2

Calculating resistor value and

Tolerance
The resistor colour code system is a well and good but we need to
understand how to apply it in order to get correct value of the resistor. The
left hand or most significant coloured band is the band which is nearest to
a connecting lead with the colour coded bands being read from left to
right as follows;

Colour, colour, multiplier = digit, digit, 10digit in ohms

For exam the value of resistor in figure 2.0 can be calculated as
Red, brown, yellow
= 2,1,4 = 21104
= 210000 = 210K
The fourth band is used to determine the percentage tolerance of
the resistor. Resistor tolerance is a measure of the resistor variation from
the specified resistive value and is a consequence of the manufacturing
process and is expressed as a percentage of its nominal or preferred
value.
Now to calculate the tolerance value, the fourth colour band of the resistor
of figure2.0 is silver which indicate 10% tolerance
Resistor value = 210000
10% tolerance = 210000 0.1
Tolerance upper limit = (210 + 21)K = 231 K
Tolerance lower limit = (210 - 21)K = 189 K
Tolerance band = (231 -189 ) K = 42 K
This shows that when designing a circuit that requires a resistor of
210kilo ohms, then any value of resistor from 189kilo ohms to 231kilo
ohms will make the circuit function properly if the actual desired resistor is
not available. Any value outside this range is considered out of tolerance
and may affect the circuit performance.

2.3

Tolerance of a Mechanical Component

The final performance relies on each component functioning as

expected. The inputs to the system provide the desired output. Tolerance
10

provides the range of values for each element of the design that permit
the desired result to occur with each product, instead of making the part
exactly to the drawing dimension. The manufacturer creates the item it is
within the tolerances the assembly will perform as the design intended.
For example if a shaft with nominal diameter of 10mm is to have a
sliding fit within a hole, the shaft might be specified to have a tolerance
of 00.2 while the hole may be design to have a tolerance of 0 0.4 this
means that the diameter of the shaft can range from 9.98 to 10.02. Any
value of these diameter of the shaft will fit into the hole as required. When
no tolerance is provided the machine industry normally used the following
standard tolerance; 0.2", 0.01", 0.005" and 0.0005.[5]

2.4

Causes of Variation in Components

The machine which perform operations on the work piece may have

inherent inaccuracies built into them.

The tools used on the machines are subjected to dulling, general

wear, chipping, breaking and differences occurs due to regrinding

The material used is subjected to variations
The involvement of human element
Any other cause by chance.

3.0

Conclusion
11

Tolerance design plays a major role in the quality of a product life

cycle. Its purpose is not only to ensure good product, it can also improve
the reliability of a product. Dimension, properties, or condition may have
some variation without significantly affecting the functions of the system
in as much as it is within the specified tolerance.

12

References
[1]Arun, K.S, Nitin H.V, Understanding Fault Tolerance and Reliability,
University of Washington, April 1997.
[2]Andrew Taylor, Design for Reliability, Art and Engineering in Product
Design, 2006
[3]Dr. P.M. Pandey, Tolerance Analysis
[4]Importance of tolerance, November 2016, Retrieved from http://
www.designwordonline.com
[5]Resistor colour code and tolerance, November 2016, retrieved from
http://www. Electronics.tutorial.ws/resistor.

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