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

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...

The failure modes of flip chip solder joints under high electrical current density are studied experimentally. Three different failure modes are reported. Only one of the failure modes is caused by the combined effect of electromigration and thermomigration, where void nucleation and growth contribute to the ultimate failure of the module. The Ni under bump metallization–solder joint interface ...

In reliability, failure data often correspond to competing risks, where several failure modes can cause a unit to fail. This paper presents nonparametric predictive inference (NPI) for pairwise comparison with competing risks data, assuming that the failure modes are independent. These failure modes could be the same or different among the two groups, and these can be both observed and unobserv...

Advanced composites are not without a trade-off. Their increased designability brings an increase in the complexity of their internal geometry and, as a result, possible modes of failure. When two or more isotropic materials are combined in a composite, the isotropic failure modes may also combine. In a laminate, matrix delamination, cracking and crazing, and voids and porosity, will often comb...

Safety instrumented systems (SISs) are becoming increasingly complex and the proportion of programmable electronic parts is growing. The IEC 61508 global standard was established to ensure the functional safety of SISs, but it was expressed in highly macroscopic terms. This study introduces an evaluation process for hardware safety integrity levels through failure modes, effects, and diagnostic...

In order for the rapidly emerging field of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) to meet its extraordinary expectations regarding commercial impact, issues pertaining to how they fail must be understood. We identify failure modes common to a broad range of MEMS actuators, including adhesion (stiction) and friction-induced failures caused by improper operational methods, mechanical instabilities...

Thin adhesive pads used to attach objects to each other often fail catastrophically. Here we consider the nature of failure of such a pad under loading parallel to the adhesive substrate. To determine the modes of failure of the pad and to understand what limits its load bearing capacity, we conduct experiments with finite pads composed of a soft adhesive layer with a stiff backing and load the...

Managers are constantly being told that the quality of data is insufficient for producing reliable results from business models. Reliability analysis is no exception. In this paper, the authors show that it is possible to retrospectively improve the quality of failure histories stored in computerised maintenance management systems (CMMS). A tool was developed to help reliability professionals a...