Availability, Reliability, Maintainability

Note: The information below is provided as an overview of Availability, Reliability and Maintainability
and .. More detailed and reliable information is provided at the sites linked at the bottom of this
page...

General

An item or system is specified, procured, and designed to a functional requirement

and it is important that it satisfies this requirement. However it is also desirable that
the the item or system should be predictably available and this depends upon the its
reliability and availability. For some disposable products in our modern society the
availability requirement may be acceptably low. For a large range of consumer
products the availability, based on high reliability, is an important selling point. For
items and systems used in critical areas including military equipment, process plant ,
and the nuclear industry, the availability, reliability and maintainability
considerations are vital.

The economic justification for a project is generally based on the lifetime cost of the
project. A major contribution to this cost involves an evaluation of the availability
reliability and maintainability of the equipment..

Availability

The 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.

At its simplest level..

Availability = Uptime / (Downtime + Uptime)

The time units are generally hours and the time base is 1 year . There are 8760
hours in one year.

From the design area of concern this equation translates to ..

Availability(Intrinsic) A i = MTBF / (MTBF + MTTR)

MTBF = Mean time between failures..

MTTR = Mean time to repair / Mean time to replace.

Operational availability is defined differently

Availability (Operational) A o = MTBM/(MTBM+MDT).

MTBM = Mean time between maintenance..

MDT = Mean Down Time
Reliability

The ability of an item to perform a required function under given conditions for a
given time interval.

The reliability is expressed as a probability (0-1 or 0 to 100%). Thus the reliability

of a component may be expressed as 99% that it will work successfully for one year.
The reliability is essentially an indication of probability that a the item will not fail
in the given time period.

A very generalised curve for the failure rates of components over time is the bathtub
curve. This shows that in the early period a number of failures result from
manufacturing, assembly, commissioning, setting to work problems. When all of the
teething problems have been eliminated the remaining population has a useful life
over which the items fail at a relatively low rate. After a long operating time
interval the items will fail at an increasing rate due to wear and other time related
functions. This curve applies mostly to electronic components which is why
electronic products are operated continuously for set times (burn-in) prior to
delivery to users..

The bathtub curve for mass produced mechanical items is controlled to minimise the
initial early failure period by use of quality control to ensure uniformity of
production of high reliability items. Before items are introduced onto the market
they are rigorously tested to identify and correct design and manufacturing
problems. A prime target of design, manufacturing and operation is to ensure that
the useful life is extended by attention to the following factors.

Strength/ Life safety factors

Tribology considerations (Prevention of wear and
lubrication )
Corrosion prevention
Protection against environment effects (temperature
/humidity)
Fatigue
 Vibration

Regular servicing (or elimination) of short life components

(filters /brakes pads etc)

For systems with items in series the overall reliability is the product of the
reliabilities of the individual components..

For systems with active items in parallel the resulting reliability is improved. For
example if there are two items in parallel A (Reliability Ra) and B (Reliability
Rb). The overall reliability is = 1-(1-Ra)*(1-Rb)

Maintainability

The ability of an item under given conditions of use, to be retained in, or restored to,
a state in which it can perform a required function, when maintenance is performed
under given conditions and using stated procedures and resources.

When a piece of equipment has failed it is important to get it back into an operating
condition as soon as possible, this is known as maintainability. To calculate the
maintainability or Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) of an item, the time required to
perform each anticipated repair task is multiplied by the relative frequency with
which that task is performed(e.g. no. of times per year). MTTR data supplied by
manufacturers will be purely repair time which will assume the fault is correctly
identified and the required spares and personnel are available. The MTTR to the
user will include the logistic delay as shown below. The MTTR should also include
factors such as the skill of the maintenance engineers

MTTR User factors...

Detection of fault
Start Up mainenance team
Diagnose fault
Obtain Spare parts
Repair (MTTR-Manufacturers information)
Test and accept repair

Start up equipment