When developing protocols for a speci c communication medium it is very useful to have a detailled fault hypothesis available In this paper the failure behaviour of the TDMA driven Ethernet in the MARS system will be described

This paper reports test results on electrical characteristics, evaluation of design, failure modes and reliability of thermally actuated, commercially available micromachined relays. The selected parts have been characterized over a wide range of temperatures (from – 100 °C to +180 °C) and varying load conditions (voltages from 10 V to 70 V, and currents from 5 mA to 200 mA). Mechanical integri...

This paper argues that star forming environments should be classified into finer divisions than the traditional isolated and clustered modes. Using the observed set of galactic open clusters and theoretical considerations regarding cluster formation, we estimate the fraction of star formation that takes place within clusters. We find that less than ∼ 10% of the stellar population originates fro...

Subject to a voltage, a dielectric elastomer can deform substantially, making it a desirable material for actuators. Designing such an actuator, however, has been challenging due to nonlinear equations of state, as well as multiple modes of failure, parameters of design, and measures of performance. This paper explores these issues, using a spring-roll actuator as an example. We formulate the e...

Due to performance and certification criteria, complex mechanical systems have to take into account several constraints, which can be associated with a series of performance functions. Different software are generally used to evaluate such functions, whose computational cost can vary a lot. In conception or reliability analysis, we thus are interested in the identification of the boundaries of ...

Functional safety standards (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) require a safety life cycle which demands additional design and engineering tasks to be managed. This paper addresses how the existing FMEAs have to be extended and refocused to address and overview signal paths throughout the system. The safety standards require to classify signals with a SIL (Safety Integrity Level) and the higher the SIL the...