Aerospace Reliability Engineering
Reliability for Optimum Hardware Performance
Aerospace Reliability Engineering
Reliability for Optimum Hardware Performance
About Aero Reliant
Who we are. Our Mission
Aero Reliant is a Reliability Engineering consulting firm engaged in the generation and/or review of Reliability Engineering Analyses for spacecraft and aircraft avionics hardware. The firm is managed and operated by its owner who has 37 years of experience in the aerospace industry in the design of hardware and also in reliability engineering practices for avionics.
At Aero Reliant, our mission is to help you design your avionics hardware
for maximum reliability in flight (airborne or spaceborne). We implement multiple reliability engineering processes for such purpose. The depth of the reliability engineering processes depends on the customer needs. When you succeed, we then succeed. We are invested in your success.
Reliability Engineering Solutions by Aero Reliant
General Capabilities
We can assist customers in the generation of a series of reliability analyses whose results can be used to significantly increase the design, manufacture and performance of avionics hardware for long durations, including under potentially stressful missions/flights and environmental conditions.
Engaging expert reliability consultants enables aerospace organizations to optimize operations across the entire product lifecycle, from design and manufacturing to maintenance and supply chain management.
For spacecraft avionics, reliability is crucial because spacecraft operate in the extreme environment of space with long term operations and no possibility mission repair. Mission success depends on the continued reliability of spacecraft systems.
For aircraft, high avionics reliability is a fundamental requirement for maintaining flight safety and operational integrity. Failure of flight systems can lead to a loss of automation or degraded situational awareness. The reliability of navigational systems is critical for safe takeoff, flight paths adherence, and landings.
Both the spacecraft and aircraft industries implement rigorous strategies to achieve the high level of reliability required for avionics hardware. Redundancy and fault tolerance are unique reliability processes that need special attention during reliability analyses.
A list of practiced reliability analyses that we can perform follows.
FMEA/FMECA
Aerospace Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) or criticality analysis (FMECA) is a proactive, systematic methodology to identify potential failure modes in aerospace systems, subsystems, avionics and analyze their causes and effects, and prioritize them based on severity, frequency, and detectability to develop mitigation strategies, ensuring the safety, reliability, and quality of aerospace products and processes. Often, a FMEA is performed with an added Criticality Analysis (CA) to specifically rank failure modes based on the combined influence of severity and probability of occurrence, creating an FMECA. To goal is to anticipate, document, and reduce or eliminate potential failures by understanding their potential effects and implementing corrective actions early in the design process. FMEA/FMECA can be performed at card, assembly, box, interfaces, subsystem, and system levels, as required by the customer.
Reliability Block Diagrams
Aerospace reliability block diagram (RBD) modeling uses graphical diagrams to represent a system's components and their logical connections, allowing them to quantitatively assess system reliability, identify critical failure points, and perform tradeoff analyses to improve safety and performance. RBDs are created by representing each component as a block and depicting their success paths through series and parallel configurations, which are then analyzed using software and calculations to predict reliability and availability metrics. RBDs can be used for Reliability Prediction, System Design & Optimization, Critical Component Identification, Safety Standards, and Maintenance & Performance Analysis.
Fault Management
Aerospace reliability fault management analysis is a discipline that integrates reliability engineering with fault management to achieve mission success and safety in high consequence aerospace systems. It encompasses the systematic methods used to predict, prevent, detect, isolate, and recover from failures in spacecraft, aircraft, and related equipment. Fault management implementations are done at the design phase and operational phase.
Reliability Engineering Solutions by Aero Reliant (Cont.)
Electronics Parts Stress Analyses
Aerospace reliability is enhanced by part stress analysis, a method to predict component failure rates based on the specific operating conditions and environmental stresses they experience. This analysis uses various stress derating factors to determine failure rates and is a vital part of the design process, especially for electronics, by identifying potential problem areas and allowing engineers to implement mitigation strategies like component derating (operating below maximum limits) to ensure longevity and safety, especially during the early design stages of the avionics hardware. Benefits of Part Stress Analysis are proactive risk mitigation, improved reliability, more reliable and longer-lasting components and systems, informed design decisions, and cost and time savings.
Radiation Stress Analyses
In aerospace engineering, reliability analysis involving radiation and stress is crucial for ensuring the longevity and safety of spacecraft, satellites, and high-altitude aircraft. It evaluates how harsh environments degrade materials and electronics over time, leading to component failure, system malfunction, or even catastrophic mission failure. Radiation effects in electronic components can be: Total Ionizing Dose (TID), Displacement Damage Dose (DDD), Single Event Effects (SEE), and radiation effects on materials.
Worst Case Analyses
Aerospace reliability worst-case-circuit-analysis (WCCA) is a quantitative assessment that verifies if an electronic design meets its performance specifications under extreme operating conditions by accounting for component tolerances, aging, and environmental factors like temperature, radiation, and power anomalies. It uses SPICE-type simulations and mathematical models to evaluate how extreme parameter values affect the circuit's functional performance, ensuring robustness and mitigating potential failures. WCCA is crucial for ensuring the resilience and safety of vital systems in the high-stakes aerospace industry. The primary goal is to ensure that a system's functional performance remains within its required specifications over its entire design life, even under the most challenging conditions. The methodology involves circuit modeling: Generating or obtaining accurate circuit models, component parameter analysis, determining the sensitivity of the design to each component's parameters and their associated worst-case tolerances.
Fault Tree Analyses
An aerospace fault tree analysis (FTA) is a systematic, top-down deductive method that visually maps out the potential causes of an undesired event, such as a system failure in an aircraft. It uses a graphical diagram with logic gates and symbols to identify and understand how individual component failures or errors can combine to lead to a major failure. This analysis helps prioritize risks, improve system design, and enhance the safety and reliability of aerospace systems by identifying vulnerabilities and assessing the probability of failures. Fault Trees can be performed at the mechanical and electronic levels.
Failure Reporting, Analyses, and Corrective Actions (FRACAS)
In the aerospace and defense industries, FRACAS is a reliability and maintenance process that provides a closed-loop system for handling failures. Its purpose is to solve reliability and maintainability issues throughout a system's life cycle. The FRACAS process typically involves these steps:
Failure reporting: Failures and defects are formally reported through standardized forms. For aviation, this is often done using standardized codes, like the ATA (Air Transport Association) codes.
Failure analysis: Root causes for the reported failures are identified.
Corrective actions: Actions are identified, implemented, and verified to prevent the failure from happening again
Reliability Engineering Training
Customize training is available at customers’ aerospace facilities on the implementation of the reliability analyses of most interest to the customer. Training of the fundamentals of reliability engineering are also available.