Design For Reliability

• Presented By,
• Pranit Dhole (PA 09)
• Manish Jadhav (PA 14)
• Tejas Shinde (PA 06 )
• Abhishek Birajdar (PA 23)
 Engineers often talk about the importance of design for
reliability (DfR) and the impact it has on a product’s
overall efficiencies and success. So, let’s take a look at
DfR fundamentals and how companies employ it to
What Is Design their best advantage.

for Reliability
(DfR)? Essentially, DfR is a process that ensures a product, or
system, performs a specified function within a given
environment over the expected lifetime.
 The DFR manual includes a brief overview of your organization’s policy concerning reliability
performance.

It should primarily focus on sections which provide detailed ‘how to’ guidelines for the fundamental
reliability tasks for your organization.

For example, you may include a chapter on reliability measures and reporting. This details the

• Design for sources of data, best practices, and reporting methods.

Reliability Potential chapters may include:

Manual
A short outline on how to set reliability goals, with the factors to consider for early life, warranty,
and serviceable life (or appropriate time frames for your products).

Possibly include a short tutorial on reading Weibull CDF plots. Plus, consider adding a brief
introduction to reliability statistics and data analysis.
An overview of risk identification tools, such as FMEA and HALT may advert unnecessary seeking for
definitions across the team. Provide basic FMEA and HALT steps to accomplish as it will assist teams
to understand what and how to accomplish these tasks, plus provide reasonable resource
requirements.
Steps for Reliability Optimization:

1 2 3 4 5

The design can be The product can be Component derating can be Steps can be taken to The system can be designed
simplified as much as designed with redundancy, used to improve the ratio of reduce the adverse effects for easier service, both
possible duplicate or backup load to capacity of the of the environment in regular maintenance and
systems that continue the components used. which the product must repair. This will either
operation of the product if a operate. enhance the reliability of
primary device should fail. the product or make failures
of some component less
critical to the product’s
operation
Reliability And Failure 
• Reliability :
                 It is a measure of how a product maintains quality over time
(Quality, in this context, is in        terms of satisfactory performance
understated set of operating conditions). 

• Failure:
                Failure is a non-satisfactory performance. Mechanical failure is
any change or any design or manufacturing error that renders a
component, assembly, or system incapable of performing its intended
function. 
EXAMPLES OF MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES
1. Structural fracture:  excessive deflection, buckling 
2. Thermodynamic overheating: reduction in efficiency
3. Fluid leakage:  distorted flow 
4. Kinematic bearing seizure: reduction in the accuracy of the relative
movement 
5. Hydraulic actuation: fitting leakage, static seal leak, fluid dirt
contamination, actuator cylinder rupture.
Typical Sources Of Failure 
1. Wear 
2. Fatigue 
3. Yielding 
4. Jamming 
5. Bonding weakness 
6. Property change 
7. Buckling 
8. Imbalance
Design consideration in design for Reliability 
1. Initial manufacturing costs may increase as the reliabilityis improved -
however, overall life-cycle costs can decrease. 
2. The ideal objective is to achieve operating reliability while limiting theimpact
on manufacturing costs. 
3. The designer can control reliability by appropriate combination of: 
•  a sound concept 
• careful detailed design 
•  high-quality components 
• redundancy of critical elements 
•  ample safety factors
CASE STUDY – VEHICLE TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
 Introduction

• A design for reliability process that aims to achieve this particular outcome in the case of a mechanical
vehicle transmission system. A detailed case study involving design for reliability of a vehicle transmission
system is presented.
• Structurally, a typical vehicle power transmission system (PT) comprises the following sub-systems/elements:
clutch, gear box, universal joint and rear axle.
• Reliability is designed into the vehicle design and development process coupled with appropriate design
methods, such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), quality function deployment (QFD), design of
experiments (DoE), the Taguchi method, and other.
• A comprehensive design for reliability model for critical vehicle systems and subsystems coupled with the
failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method could help identify and alleviate potential failure modes,
and hence maximize vehicle reliability
 Conceptual stage
• The quality function deployment (QFD) method is applied here to translate the users’ needs and requirements into a
design specification.
• This was achieved using a range of survey instruments, such as questionaries and interviews, with a large number of
freight vehicle users.

Table 1 Failure of parts of universal joint

Fig. 2 Reliability block diagram of vehicle transmission

Fig. 1 Design specification

• The designed tube failure intensity value = 0.005019*10^-6 km , while the operational value = 0.23323*10^-
6 km .
• The operational value covers the following failure modes as stated in Table 1: serrations fracture, serrations
wear, spindle tube fracture, front weld cracks, rear weld cracks, articulated fork fracture, fork deformation, and
washer damage.
• The mean value of yield stress determined through spindle tube testing is 46.6 N/mm^2.
• The mean value of the spindle tube operating load is 12.2 N/mm^2.
• The spindle tube reliability is 0.99926.
• The vehicle transmission was treated as a particular vehicle system configured in series, and comprising of the
clutch, gearbox, universal joint, and rear axle as subsystems.
 Conclusion

• The article proposed a comprehensive design for reliability process for a vehicle power transmission system
that can be used to design-in desired reliability levels in order to reduce risks of critical failures during the
useful life of the vehicle.
• This methodology encompasses the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed stages of design for reliability. 
• It is based on the evaluation of critical failure modes and associated risk priority numbers using the failure
modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and failure mode, effects, and critical analysis (FMECA) methods, which are
then quantified with greater certainty by determining relevant designed-in reliability values and comparing
them with the required or actual reliability values in operation.