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At least 19 records

A Misperception in Reliability Growth Modelling

The Duane reliability growth model is n(t)/t = k t^-alpha (1) The reliability growth rate is alpha, the downward slope of n(t)/t versus t. It usually varies from 0.2 to 0.6. k is a constant. Crow used a 56-failure data set to illustrate reliability growth.1 A graphical Duane model fit to this data gives n(t)/t = 0.640 t^-0.283 (2) A problem in using the Duane-Crow reliability growth model is that it assumes that reliability growth continues and the failure rate decreases throughout the test period. It is more usual that reliability growth stops when the failure rated is low enough. Growth testing is often followed by testing with a low constant failure rate due to rare or uncorrectable failure modes. As more and more low constant rate acceptable failures accumulate after the period of reliability growth, the reliability growth time exponent alpha decreases toward zero. This occurs if constant rate failures are treated as occurring during the reliability growth period. It is more accurate to model a period of initial reliability growth followed by testing without repair to more accurately determine the final constant failure rate. This is done in the abcd model. n(t)/t = a t^-b + c from t = 0 to td (3) = c + d after td, where d = a td^-b (4) The term a t^-b describes the continuous reliability growth that continues out to time td and c is the constant uncorrected failure rate. The parameter d represents an additional constant failure rate due to correctable but uncorrected failure modes. After the reliability growth process is terminated, the failure rate n(t)/t = c + d.

Harry W Jones↗

Projecting Future Urbanization with Prescott College's Spatial Growth Model to Promote Environmental Sustainability and Smart Growth, A Case Study in Atlanta, Georgia

Planning is an integral element of good management and necessary to anticipate events not merely respond to them. Projecting the quantity and spatial distribution of urban growth is essential to effectively plan for the delivery of city services and to evaluate potential environmental impacts. The major drivers of growth in large urban areas are increasing population, employment opportunities, and quality of life attractors such as a favorable climate and recreation opportunities. The spatial distribution of urban growth is dictated by the amount and location of developable land, topography, energy and water resources, transportation network, climate change, and the existing land use configuration. The Atlanta region is growing very rapidly both in population and the consumption of forestland or low-density residential development. Air pollution and water availability are significant ongoing environmental issues. The Prescott Spatial Growth Model (SGM) was used to make growth projections for the metropolitan Atlanta region to 2010,2020 and 2030 and results used for environmental assessment in both business as usual and smart growth scenarios. The Prescott SGM is a tool that uses an ESRI ArcView extension and can be applied at the parcel level or more coarse spatial scales and can accommodate a wide range of user inputs to develop any number of growth rules each of which can be weighted depending on growth assumptions. These projections were used in conjunction with meteorological and air quality models to evaluate future environmental impacts. This presentation will focus on the application of the SGM to the 13-County Atlanta Regional Commission planning jurisdiction as a case study. The SGM will be described, including how rule sets are developed and the decision process for allocation of future development to available land use categories. Data inputs required to effectively run the model will be discussed. Spatial growth projections for ten, twenty, and thirty year planning horizons will be presented and results discussed, including regional climate and air quality impacts.

Estes, Maurice G., Jr.↗

The abcd Reliability Growth Model

This paper presents a modification of the well-known Duane-Crow reliability growth model. In the abcd reliability growth model, the initial period of exponential decline of the failure rate in the Duane-Crow model may be followed by a period of constant failure rate. Data often show that an exponential decline in failures is followed by a constant failure rate. If a growth model including only the initial period of exponential decline is applied to increasingly longer failure rate data sets, the data will include longer periods of constant failure rate, and the estimated reliability growth rate will decline from an initially high value down toward zero. Using the Duane-Crow model without extending it to include a possible period of constant failure rate may create the mistaken impression that the initial reliability growth continues forever, but at an ever decreasing rate.

Reliability growth↗

The abcd Reliability Growth Model

This paper presents a modification of the well-known Duane-Crow reliability growth model. In the abcd reliability growth model, the initial period of exponential decline of the failure rate in the Duane-Crow model may be followed by a period of constant failure rate. Data often show that an exponential decline in failures is followed by a constant failure rate. If a growth model including only the initial period of exponential decline is applied to increasingly longer failure rate data sets, the data will include longer periods of constant failure rate, and the estimated reliability growth rate will decline from an initially high value down toward zero. Using the Duane-Crow model without extending it to include a possible period of constant failure rate may create the mistaken impression that the initial reliability growth continues forever, but at an ever decreasing rate.

Reliability growth↗

An overview of reliability growth models and their potential use for NASA applications

An overview is provided of reliability growth literature over the past 25 years. This includes a thorough literature review of different areas of the application of reliability growth such as design, prediction, tracking/management, and demonstration. Various reliability growth models use different bases on how they characterize growth. Different models are discussed. Also, the use is addressed of reliability growth models to NASA applications. This includes the application of these models to the space shuttle main engine. For potential NASA applications, we classify growth models in two groups, which are characterized.

Taneja, V. S.↗

Reliability Growth Modeling and Testing

Reliability growth has been modelled as an exponential decline in the cumulative failure rate that continues indefinitely as long as testing continues. Contrary to this, most reliability growth data show a brief high initial failure rate due to infant mortality followed by a long period of constant low failure rate. A two part failure rate model with an initial exponential decline followed by a constant failure rate usually fits the data and provides a more realistic description of reliability growth. The reliability growth process consists of testing, experiencing failures, finding the failure causes, and redesigning the system to remove them. The cost of reliability growth increases with the number of inherent failure modes and the time needed for them to occur and be removed. The failure modes with the lower failure rates will tend to occur later, as their Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) is the inverse of the failure rate. Reliability growth testing has diminishing returns, since it takes longer to find and remove the less probable failures.This paper first discusses the reliability bathtub curve and then explains that reliability growth is produced by testing, identifying failure causes, and designing to remove them. A simple model of reliability growth is introduced, with a brief group of early failures followed by a constant failure rate. The cumulative failure rate n(t)/t can decline as rapidly as1/t or t-1butdeclines more slowly if additiona lfailures occur. The 56-failure Crow data seti s used to demonstrate the two-phase model of reliability growth followed by a constant failure rate. 13 additional data sets are modeled, with 9 of the 14 data sets showing reliability growth approximately as n(t)/t =1/t or t-1and substantial final failure rates. The model fits most of the data sets, but 4of the 14 show no reliability growth. The reliability growth period typically includes six failures and extends one-quarter or half the total test time. As reliability growth testing continues, the cumulative failure rate should be tracked to estimate the reliability growth exponent and the final failure rate.

reliability growth modeling↗

A New Snow Module Improves Predictions of the Isotope-Enabled MAIDENiso Forest Growth Model

The representation of snow processes in forest growth models is necessary to accurately predict the hydrological cycle in boreal ecosystems and the isotopic signature of soil water extracted by trees, photosynthates and tree-ring cellulose. Yet, most process-based models do not include a snow module; consequently, their simulations may be biased in cold environments. Here, we modified the MAIDENiso model to incorporate a new snow module that simulates snow accumulation, melting and sublimation, as well as thermal exchanges driving freezing and thawing of the snow and the soil. We tested these implementations in two sites in eastern and western Canada for black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) and white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) forests, respectively. The new snow module improves the skills of the model to predict components of the hydrological cycle. The MAIDENiso model is now able to reproduce the spring discharge peak and to simulate stable oxygen isotopes in tree-ring cellulose more realistically than in the original snow-free version of the model. The new implementation also results in simulations with a higher contribution from the source water on the oxygen isotopic composition of the simulated cellulose, leading to more accurate estimates of cellulose isotopic composition. Future work may include the development of inverse modelling with this new version of MAIDENiso to produce robust reconstructions of the hydrological cycle and isotope processes in cold environments.

Snow processes↗

A mathematical model for crop spectral-temporal trajectories based on a plant growth model

The Kubelka-Munk radiative transfer model is combined with an approximation of Kauth-Thomas greeness and brightness transforms to derive approximate closed form expressions for crop greeness and brightness surrogates in terms of canopy biomass. The greeness relation derived resembles an existing empirical relation between leaf area index and greeness. A simple growth model based on interception and utilization of photosynthetically active radiation is developed and used to describe the time evolution of greeness and brightness. The model developed does not yet yield definitive profile calculations but suggests a conceptual framework which may be found useful for further profile analysis.

Woolford, T. L.↗

A critical examination of the dendrite growth models Comparison of theory with experimental data

Three dendrite growth models for directionally solidified succinonitrile-acetone, succinonitrile-salol, aluminum-copper, and lead-paladium alloys are evaluated. The characteristics of the Burden and Hunt (1974) model, the Laxmanan (1985) model, and the Trivedi (1980) model are described. The dendrite tip temperature, tip radius, liquid composition, and primary arm spacing for the alloys are analyzed in terms of growth speed, alloy composition, and temperature gradient. It is observed that the Burden and Hunt model accurately predicts the proper behavior of the parameters, but does not provide good quantitative predictions. A good fit between the experimental data and the Trivedi and Laxmanan models is detected. The advantages of the Trivedi marginal stability analysis and the Laxmanan minimum dendrite tip undercooling approaches are discussed.

Tewari, S. N.↗

Plant growth modeling at the JSC variable pressure growth chamber - An application of experimental design

This paper describes the approach and results of an effort to characterize plant growth under various environmental conditions at the Johnson Space Center variable pressure growth chamber. Using a field of applied mathematics and statistics known as design of experiments (DOE), we developed a test plan for varying environmental parameters during a lettuce growth experiment. The test plan was developed using a Box-Behnken approach to DOE. As a result of the experimental runs, we have developed empirical models of both the transpiration process and carbon dioxide assimilation for Waldman's Green lettuce over specified ranges of environmental parameters including carbon dioxide concentration, light intensity, dew-point temperature, and air velocity. This model also predicts transpiration and carbon dioxide assimilation for different ages of the plant canopy.

Miller, Adam M.↗

Cluster growth modeling of plateau erosion

The pattern of erosion of a plateau along an escarpment may be modeled usng cluster growth techniques, recently popularized in models of drainage network evolution. If erosion on the scarp takes place in discrete events at rates subject to local substrate strength, the whole range of behavior is described by a combination of three cluster growth mechanisms: invasion percolation, Eden growth and diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA). These model the relative importance of preexisting substrate strength, background weathering, and seepage weathering and erosion respectively. The rate of seepage processes is determined by the efflux of groundwater at the plateau margin, which in turn is determined by the pressure field in the plateau aquifer. If this process acted alone, it would produce erosion patterns in the form of Laplacian fractals, with groundwater recharge from a distant source, or Poissionian fractals, with groundwater recharge uniform over the plateau. DLA is used to mimic the Laplacian or Poissonian potential field and the corresponding seepage growth process. The scaling structure of clusters grown by pure DLA, invasion percolation, or Eden growth is well known; this study presents a model which combines all three growth mechanisms for the first time. Mixed growth processes create clusters with different scaling properties and morphologies over distinct length scale ranges, and this is demonstrable in natural examples of plateau erosion.

Stark, Colin P.↗

On the use and the performance of software reliability growth models

We address the problem of predicting future failures for a piece of software. The number of failures occurring during a finite future time interval is predicted from the number failures observed during an initial period of usage by using software reliability growth models. Two different methods for using the models are considered: straightforward use of individual models, and dynamic selection among models based on goodness-of-fit and quality-of-prediction criteria. Performance is judged by the relative error of the predicted number of failures over future finite time intervals relative to the number of failures eventually observed during the intervals. Six of the former models and eight of the latter are evaluated, based on their performance on twenty data sets. Many open questions remain regarding the use and the performance of software reliability growth models.

Keiller, Peter A.↗

Reliability growth models for NASA applications

The objective of any reliability growth study is prediction of reliability at some future instant. Another objective is statistical inference, estimation of reliability for reliability demonstration. A cause of concern for the development engineer and management is that reliability demands an excessive number of tests for reliability demonstration. For example, the Space Transportation Main Engine (STME) program requirements call for .99 reliability at 90 pct. confidence for demonstration. This requires running 230 tests with zero failure if a classical binomial model is used. It is therefore also an objective to explore the reliability growth models for reliability demonstration and tracking and their applicability to NASA programs. A reliability growth model is an analytical tool used to monitor the reliability progress during the development program and to establish a test plan to demonstrate an acceptable system reliability.

Taneja, Vidya S.↗

Importance of aggregation and small ice crystals in cirrus clouds, based on observations and an ice particle growth model

The 1 November 1986 FIRE I case study was used to test an ice particle growth model which predicts bimodal size spectra in cirrus clouds. The model was developed from an analytically based model which predicts the height evolution of monomodal ice particle size spectra from the measured ice water content (IWC). Size spectra from the monomodal model are represented by a gamma distribution, N(D) = N(sub o)D(exp nu)exp(-lambda D), where D = ice particle maximum dimension. The slope parameter, lambda, and the parameter N(sub o) are predicted from the IWC through the growth processes of vapor diffusion and aggregation. The model formulation is analytical, computationally efficient, and well suited for incorporation into larger models. The monomodal model has been validated against two other cirrus cloud case studies. From the monomodal size spectra, the size distributions which determine concentrations of ice particles less than about 150 mu m are predicted.

Mitchell, David L.↗

A dynamic growth model of vegetative soya bean plants: model structure and behaviour under varying root temperature and nitrogen concentration

A differential equation model of vegetative growth of the soya bean plant (Glycine max (L.) Merrill cv. Ransom') was developed to account for plant growth in a phytotron system under variation of root temperature and nitrogen concentration in nutrient solution. The model was tested by comparing model outputs with data from four different experiments. Model predictions agreed fairly well with measured plant performance over a wide range of root temperatures and over a range of nitrogen concentrations in nutrient solution between 0.5 and 10.0 mmol NO3- in the phytotron environment. Sensitivity analyses revealed that the model was most sensitive to changes in parameters relating to carbohydrate concentration in the plant and nitrogen uptake rate.

Non-NASA Center↗

Reliability growth modeling analysis of the space shuttle main engines based upon the Weibull process

The Weibull process, identified as the inhomogeneous Poisson process with the Weibull intensity function, is used to model the reliability growth assessment of the space shuttle main engine test and flight failure data. Additional tables of percentage-point probabilities for several different values of the confidence coefficient have been generated for setting (1-alpha)100-percent two sided confidence interval estimates on the mean time between failures. The tabled data pertain to two cases: (1) time-terminated testing, and (2) failure-terminated testing. The critical values of the three test statistics, namely Cramer-von Mises, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, and chi-square, were calculated and tabled for use in the goodness of fit tests for the engine reliability data. Numerical results are presented for five different groupings of the engine data that reflect the actual response to the failures.

Wheeler, J. T.↗

Surface-crack growth: Models, experiments, and structures; Proceedings of the Symposium, Sparks, NV, Apr. 25, 1988

The present volume on surface-crack growth modeling, experimental methods, and structures, discusses elastoplastic behavior, the fracture analysis of three-dimensional bodies with surface cracks, optical measurements of free-surface effects on natural surfaces and through cracks, an optical and finite-element investigation of a plastically deformed surface flaw under tension, fracture behavior prediction for rapidly loaded surface-cracked specimens, and surface cracks in thick laminated fiber composite plates. Also discussed are a novel study procedure for crack initiation and growth in thermal fatigue testing, the growth of surface cracks under fatigue and monotonically increasing load, the subcritical growth of a surface flaw, surface crack propagation in notched and unnotched rods, and theoretical and experimental analyses of surface cracks in weldments.

Reuter, Walter G.↗