One of the main concerns for power electronic engineers regarding capacitors is to predict their remaining lifetime in order to anticipate costly failures or system unavailability. This may be achieved using a Weibull statistical law combined with acceleration factors for the temperature, the voltage, and the humidity. This paper discusses the different capacitor failure modes and their effects...

Some nonvolatile phase change memory (PCM) cells with 80 nm heating electrodes are found early RESET failure. The causes, which result in the early failure of the PCM, have been studied. Compared the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) results, it is observed some segregation has occurred in the components at the positions close to the TiN and bottom electron contact (BEC) interface for ...

Several reliability engineering approaches have been proposed to identify and recover from failures. A well-known and mature approach is the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) method that is usually utilized together with Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) to analyze and diagnose the causes of failures. Unfortunately, both approaches seem to have primarily focused on failures of hardware components...

Functional safety analysis (FSA), that is checking whether a designed artifact will perform safely even under the presence of failing components, has gained significant importance in different areas, including aeronautic and automotive systems. The same applies to failure-modes-andeffects analysis (FMEA) and fault-tree analysis (FTA) as the major contributing processes. FSA is laborand timecons...

Functional labels provide a simple but very reusable way for defining the functionality of a system and for making use of that knowledge. Unlike more complex functional representation schemes, these labels can be efficiently linked to a behavioral simulator to interpret the simulation in a way that is meaningful to the user. They are also simple to specify, and highly reusable with different be...

While use of LEDs in fiber optics and lighting applications is common, their use in medical diagnostic applications is very rare. Since the precise value of light intensity will be used to interpret patient results, understanding failure modes is very important. We used the Failure Modes and Effects Criticality Analysis (FMECA) tool to identify the critical LED failure modes. Once the critical ...

The overall dependability of an interactive system is the one of its weakest component which is usually its user interface. The presented approach integrates techniques from the dependable computing field and elements of user-centred design to provide a wider coverage of possible faults. Risk analysis and fault tolerance techniques are used in combination with task analysis and modelling to des...

The Energy Institute (EI) has supported and co-ordinated an oil and gas industry project to investigate potential measures for the ageing effects on Safety Critical Elements (SCEs) as defined by the offshore safety regulations Prevention of Fire and Explosion, and Emergency Response, (PFEER), and Design and Construction etc. (DCR). This investigation has led to a measurement method of business ...

Today, billions of dollars are being spent annually world wide to develop, manufacture, and operate transportation system such trains, ships, aircraft, and motor vehicles. Around 70 to 90 percent of transportation crashes are, directly or indirectly, the result of human error. In fact, with the development of technology, system reliability has increased dramatically during the past decades, whi...