What Is HALTHighly accelerated life testing (HALT) is a technique to expose weaknesses or faults with a product. HALT uses individual or combined stresses in a step-stress approach to quickly apply sufficient stress to reveal defects. Continue reading
Reliability or life testing involves estimating the expected durability over time of an item. This may be an entire system, a product, or an individual component. We may also focus on an element of a component, such as a material property. At the end of the testing we want to say something meaningful about the expected performance over time. Continue reading
Why do so many avoid failure? In product development of plant asset management, we are surrounded by people who steadfastly do not want to know about nor talk about failures.
Failure does happen. We cannot ignore this simple fact. Continue reading
How many reliability engineers does it take to replace a light bulb? Well, none, but that’s because reliability engineers would use a reliable bulb to avoid the need for replacement.
Of more importance is answering the question ‘How many reliability engineers does an organization need?’ Is it
(a) none,
(b) one really good reliability engineering professional, or
(c) an entire staff of highly talented reliability engineers? Continue reading
SETTING THE MARGIN FOR SAFETYEstimating the set of stress and stress curves is an interesting exercise that may have a greater purpose: safety. The connection is clear when considering the potential consequences of failure. For example, the loss of braking power when landing an aircraft may result in the aircraft rolling off the end of the runway. Continue reading