How do Systems Fail?

A system is made up of components. The failure of a system will therefore

depend on the failure of its components. A typical components failure rate
is not constant over its lifetime. You may be wondering what failure rate
means?
Take a population of components. Failure rate refers to the number of the
components failing from that population in a unit of time.
Reliability Engineers typically characterize the lifetime of a component
with the Bathtub Curve (Figure 1). The observed failure rate of the population of components resembles a bathtub and hence the name for the curve.
The assumption in using this model is that when a component fails, it cannot
be repaired and returned to service. The component fails completely. This
model of the failure rate of a population of components consists of three
periods, namely:
1. An infant mortality period. Also known as Burn-in.
This period coincides with the very early stage of a components lifecycle. When a component comes off the factory floor, it may have defects
that may not have been detected at the factory. Naturally we expect these
defective components to fail very early. As these parts are removed from
the population, the failure rate of the now smaller population of working
components will decrease. This is described by the red curve in Figure 1.
For high grade components, especially those with military grade specifications, the manufacturer of the components will "run-in" the component
until the end of the infant mortality period.
2. Useful Life period.
During this period, any failure of the component is very random and therefore the failure rate is constant. This is the period in which the component
is used productively. This period is shown with the green curve in Figure
1.
3. End of Life.
All components and systems age over time and this is the primary mechanism of failure in the final stage of a components life-cycle. This stage is
highlighted in red in Figure 1. In the infant mortality and Useful Life periods, the wear of the component is not as significant. The wear mechanism

ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES

& P R AC T I C E I

only manifests itself in the later part of the life-cycle of a component. At

this stage, the most prudent course of action will be to replace the component.

Figure 1: The Bathtub Model of Reliability. This Figure is extracted from

www.mybackupguide.com/
how-long-do-hard-drives-last
www.backblaze.com

Reliability of Systems
A system, as stated earlier, is composed on components. Can we then use the
reliability of components to calculate the reliability of a system? The answer
is yes and this requires us to use the following idealizations:
1. series
2. parallel
But before we get into the idealizations, let us first discuss the reliability of a
component.

Component A
Reliability, rA = 0.9

Figure 2: Reliability of a Component

H OW D O S Y S T E M S F A I L ?

Figure 2 shows a component with reliability of 0.9. What does this number mean? Reliability is defined as the probability that a component (or
system) will operate satisfactorily for a given period of time. Without making
the problem It means that the probability of the component not failing is 0.9,
or alternatively, the probability of the component failing is 0.1 (1-reliability).

series idealization
When components are connected in series as shown in Figure 3. The individual reliabilities of the components are known. We want to calculate the
equivalent reliability of the system composed of these two components in
series.
As an example, consider the case when two components are connected in
series as shown in Figure 3. For a system with this configuration, the system
is considered failed when either component A fails or Component B fails or
when both Components A and B fail simultaneously. The reliability of the
system is therefore, the probability that the system is functional. The system
is functional only if Components A and B are both functional. Let r A , r B and
rS denote the reliabilities of Component A, Component B and the System
respectively. Therefore,

Component A

Component B

Reliability, rA = 0.9

Reliability, rB = 0.8

Figure 3: Reliability of a Series System

rS = probability(Component A is functional AND Component B is functional)

= reliability of Component A reliability of Component B

= r A rB
For the numerical example of Figure 3, the reliability of the system may be
calculated to be rS = 0.9 0.8 = 0.72. Please note that the reliability of the
system has become less than the individual reliabilities of the components.

Suppose the system consists of n

components in series.
Also suppose that these components
have identical reliabilities. Also suppose
that the components are very reliable.
Assume rc ompnent = 0.9.
What is the systems reliability when n is
very large? Assume n = 100

parallel idealization
Component B

We can now begin a similar analysis for systems that can be modeled using the parallel idealization. In its simplest form, consider two components
connected in parallel, as described in Figure 4. In this system, the two components are usually identical and redundancy is said to be built into it. The
system can only fail when both components fail. Otherwise the system is
functional. Therefore, using the shorthand notations as before,

Reliability, rB = 0.8

Component A
Reliability, rA = 0.9

Figure 4: Reliability of a parallel System

rS = (1 - probability of system failing)

= 1 (probability of components A AND B failing)

= 1 (1 r A )(1 r B )

complex systems
Most systems in real life are neither of the series or parallel idealizations.
Most systems will be of combinations of these idealizations. Please consider

Suppose the system consists of n

components in parallel.
1
Also suppose that these components
have identical reliabilities. Also suppose
that the components are not very
reliable. Assume rc ompnent = 0.2.
What is the systems reliability when n is
very large? Assume n = 100

ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES

& P R AC T I C E I

a system as described in Figure 5. We can calculate the reliability of this

Figure 5: An example of a complex system

Component C
Reliability, rC = 0.8

Component B

Component D

Reliability, rB = 0.8

Reliability, rD = 0.9
Component G
Reliability, rG = 0.9

Component A

Component E

Reliability, rA = 0.9

Reliability, rE = 0.8

Component F
Reliability, rF = 0.9

system by decomposing the system into series and parallel idealizations. We

may take the following steps in arriving at the final reliability of the system:
1. Consider Components A and B as a parallel system and find the reliability
of such an equivalent system. Let us denote it as Component AB.
1
2. Likewise, we can calculate the equivalent
reliabilities of parallel systems
comprising of components C and D and E and F. Let us denote these
equivalent systems as Components CD and EF.

3. Components CD and EF are also a parallel idealization. We can also apply

the same process as before and compute the reliability of the equivalent
system and denote it as Component CDEF.
4. Finally, we will have Components AB, CDEF and G in series. We can
then find the equivalent reliability of such a series system.
There are web based calculators for calculating the reliabilities of complex
systems. The web address of one such calculator is: http://www.ecs.
umass.edu/ece/koren/FaultTolerantSystems/simulator/
NonSerPar/nsnpframe.html