This handbook studies the combination of various methods of designing for reliability, availability, maintainability and safety, as well as the latest techniques in probability and possibility modeling, mathematical algorithmic modeling, evolutionary algorithmic modeling, symbolic logic modeling, artificial intelligence modeling and object-oriented computer modeling.

Reliability, Maintainability and Risk: Practical Methods for Engineers, Eighth Edition, discusses tools and techniques for reliable and safe engineering, and for optimizing maintenance strategies. It emphasizes the importance of using reliability techniques to identify and eliminate potential failures early in the design cycle. The focus is on techniques known as RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety-integrity). The book is organized into five parts. Part 1 on reliability parameters and costs traces the history of reliability and safety technology and presents a cost-effective approach to quality, reliability, and safety. Part 2 deals with the interpretation of failure rates, while Part 3 focuses on the prediction of reliability and risk. Part 4 discusses design and assurance techniques; review and testing techniques; reliability growth modeling; field data collection and feedback; predicting and demonstrating repair times; quantified reliability maintenance; and systematic failures. Part 5 deals with legal, management and safety issues, such as project management, product liability, and safety legislation. 8th edition of this core reference for engineers who deal with the design or operation of any safety critical systems, processes or operations Answers the question: how can a defect that costs less than $1000 dollars to identify at the process design stage be prevented from escalating to a $100,000 field defect, or a $1m+ catastrophe Revised throughout, with new examples, and standards, including must have material on the new edition of global functional safety standard IEC 61508, which launches in 2010

The theme of this manual is failure physics - the study of how products, hardware, software, and systems fail and what can be done about it. The intent is to impart useful information, to extend the limits of production capability, and to assist in achieving low-cost reliable products. In a broader sense the manual should do more. It should underscore the urgent need for mature attitudes toward reliability. Five of the chapters were originally presented as a classroom course to over 1000 Martin Marietta engineers and technicians. Another four chapters and three appendixes have been added. We begin with a view of reliability from the years 1940 to 2000. Chapter 2 starts the training material with a review of mathematics and a description of what elements contribute to product failures. The remaining chapters elucidate basic reliability theory and the disciplines that allow us to control and eliminate failures.