published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis is the summation of two publications with the motivation to move reliability analysis earlier in the design process. Current analyses aim to improve reliability after components have been selected. Moving specific analyses earlier in the design process reduces the cost to the designer. These early design analyses provide information to the designer so that critical design changes can be made to avoid failures. The first presents failure rates for function-flow pairs. These function-flow failure rates are used in the Early Design Reliability Method (EDRM) to calculate system level reliability during functional design. This methodology is compared to the traditional reliability block diagram for three examples to show its usefulness during early conceptual design. Next, an extension to the Function Failure Design Method (FFDM) is presented. A more robust knowledge base using Failure Mode/Mechanism Distributions 1997 (FMD-97) has been implemented. Then failure rates from Nonelectric Parts Reliability Data (NPRD-95) are added to more effectively determine the likelihood that a failure mode will occur. The proposed Functional Failure Rate Design Method (FFRDM) uses functional inputs to offer recommendations to mitigate failure modes that have a high likelihood of occurrence. This work uses a past example where FFDM and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) are compared to show that improvements have been made. A four step process is presented to show how the FFRDM is used during conceptual design. / Graduation date: 2012

Microelectronic systems such as cell phones, computers, consumer electronics, and implantable medical devices consist of subsystems which in turn consist of other subsystems and components. When such systems are designed, fabricated, assembled, and tested, they need to meet reliability, cost, performance, and other targets for being competitive. The design of reliable electronic packaging systems in a systematic and timely manner requires a consistent and unified method for allocating, predicting, and assessing reliability and for recommending design changes at the component and system level with consideration of both random and wearout failures. Accordingly, this dissertation presents a new unified knowledge modeling method for System Design for Reliability (SDfR) called the Reliability Object Model (ROM) method. The ROM method consistently addresses both reliability allocation and assessment for systems composed of series and parallel subsystems. The effectiveness of the ROM method has been demonstrated for allocating, predicting, and assessing reliability, and the results show that ROM is more effective compared to existing methods, providing richer semantics, unified techniques, and improved SDfR quality. Furthermore, this dissertation develops representative reliability metrics for random and wearout failures, and incorporates such metrics into ROM together with representative algorithms for allocation, assessment, and design change recommendations. Finally, this research implemented the ROM method in a computing framework and demonstrated its applicability using several relevant microelectronic system test cases and prototype SDfR tools.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University (Canada), 1996. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 58-06, Section: B, page: 3128. Adviser: N. Balakrishnan.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 474-514).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-149). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-149). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Rohatgi, Ajeet; Committee Co-Chair: Begovic, Miroslav; Committee Member: Gaylord, Thomas; Committee Member: Harley, Ronald; Committee Member: Jarrett, Christopher; Committee Member: Kippelen, Bernard

Thesis (Ph. D. in Software Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, Sept. 2004. / Thesis Advisor(s): Luqi. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. / Ajay Misra, Committee Member ; James Craig, Committee Member ; Richard Neu, Committee Member ; Daniel Schrage, Committee Member ; Dimitri Mavris, Committee Chair. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.