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Contact AEi Systems today for a free consultation or quotation.Reliability Analysis
Expert FMEA/FMECA, Stress, and MTBF/Fit Rate Analysis
Improve your system reliability for aerospace, automotive, and high-reliability applications.
AEi Systems performs all of these reliability assessments, which often need to be performed together.
Even large jobs can be turned quickly. All we need to quote is bill of materials (BOM in excel format).
FMEA & FMECA
Failure Mode Effects & Criticality Analysis - Failure Analysis & Troubleshooting
Failure Mode, Effects & Criticality Analysis (FMECA) identifies all credible component-level failure modes in a system and evaluates the effect and criticality of each. The objective is to ensure that any single-point failure results in graceful degradation rather than loss of function. Central to the process is accurate severity classification—a judgment that demands deep circuit-design expertise. The analysis begins with an Electrical Parts Stress Analysis (EPSA) to calculate nominal stress ratios, followed by a reliability/MTBF assessment to determine each component’s failure rate. These inputs feed the failure-mode evaluation, where effects and severity levels are assigned and the criticality of each mode is computed. The resulting mode-criticality list ranks the most consequential and most probable failure modes—the true “essence” of the FMECA process. AEi Systems performs this work rapidly and with exceptional accuracy because we combine decades of high-fidelity WCCA, stress, and reliability-engineering experience with proven analysis tools, validated methods, and engineers who specialize exclusively in worst case and failure-mode assessment.
Key Benefits:
- Eliminate single-point failures
- Validate graceful degradation
- Risk assessment and ranking
- Performance requirement validation
Standards Supported:
- MIL-STD-1629A, MIL-Handbook-338
- ECSS-Q-ST-30-02C, IEC 62380
- NPRD, RADC-TR-84-244, FMD91/97/2016
- PTC Windchill Integration
Benefits of FMECA
- Assesses what happens to the system when components do fail
- Ranks parts by failure rate and how bad a failure would be
- MIL-STD-1629A/ECSS-Q-ST-30-02C Guidance
- BOMS Configured with Failure Modes for each part
- MIL-HDBK-338B Failure mode Probabilities
- Open, Short, Change in Value
- Local, Next, and End Effects Compiled
- Severity Assigned
- FMECA Info Read into PTC Windchill
- Stress Ratios, Temperature, and Failure Rates applied
- Criticality and Risk Levels Computed
Reliability Prediction - MTBF FIT Rate Analysis
AEi Systems performs parts-count and stress-based MTBF analyses. We cover all the major standards (Mil-Handbook-217, 217Plus, Bellcore, Telcordia, FIDES, IEC, PRISM, RDF2000, VITA, Siemens). The results are used to assess the potential component failure probabilities, and when the failures may occur during the product’s lifetime. When combined with a stress analysis and a FMECA analysis, these “part-based” analyses can be very effective in pinpointing the soft spots in your design, allowing you to dramatically improve system quality.
While there are many guides that discuss reliability analyses, few discuss some of the pitfalls with calculating and interpreting the results.
An "MTBF" analysis basically sums the failure rates of the parts in the BOM. The analysis produces a single number for the system's mean time between failure (MTBF or MTTF), failure rate, and reliability. Often, an MTBF analysis is done only to compute this number, which may only be used for marketing purposes. This is a less than optimum goal for two reasons: one, the number is suspect, and two, the most useful aspect of the analysis goes unutilized.
The usefulness is marred by the variability of each part’s data. To get the failure rate correct requires attention to various characteristics that impact the calculation, any one of which can greatly change the result. A parts-count analysis is of limited usefulness.
Here are some of the issues that AEi Systems takes into account. If you don’t, the results for the SAME BOM can differ by several hundred percent.
- Calculation irregularities are commonly encountered
- Confidence Level (up to 2.5x difference between 60% & 90% derived FIT rates)
- Arrhenius translation between temperatures can be complicated
- MIL-Handbook-217 and Telcordia have a limited set of categories
- Is Stress Included in the MTBF computation?
- Are recent vendor FIT Rates applied appropriately?
- MTBF doesn’t consider “out-of-spec” conditions
- Only considers “extreme” types of failures; results may not be useful to improving reliability
Get Your Reliability Analysis Quote
Contact AEi Systems for professional Reliability Analysis services. Our experts will perform comprehensive FMEA, FMECA, Stress, and MTBF analyses to identify failure modes, assess criticality, and improve system reliability.
We support designs across aerospace, automotive, space, nuclear, medical, and other high-reliability industries where reliability analysis is critical for system success.
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