An experimental gear-box was set-up to simulate the real situation of the wind-turbine. Artificial cracks of different sizes were machined into the gear. Vibration signals were acquired to diagnose the different crack fault conditions. Time-domain features such as root mean square, variance, kurtosis, normalized 6th central moments were used to capture the characteristics of different crack conditions. Normal condition, 1 mm crack condition, 2mm crack condition, 6mm crack condition, and tooth fault condition were compared using ANFIS and DAG-SVM methods, and three different DAG-SVM models were compared. High-pass filtering improved the success rates remarkably in the case of DAG-SVM.

Wind turbine, which is attracting part of the renewable energy and is researching continuously, is going to be large size for high efficiency. There is a yaw system rotating the nacelle, weighted about 600 tons, to be perpendicular with the wind direction blowing in the large wind turbine. The wind turbine is focusing on the reliability improvement because working environment effect is bigger than any other points and specially, the reliability improvement of the yaw drive is required by the customer because it is the key component of the wind turbine. Because of this, the establishment of criteria for yaw drive is required because yaw drive system is the part of the wind turbine closely related with ensuring the reliability. So, this study did the failure analysis of the yaw drive system, which is consisted with 10 sets of yaw drives through researching and analyzing the site conditions. Also this study designed the life test method based on the failure analysis and working condition of the yaw drive. To design the accelerated life test of the yaw drive, this study reviewed the torque, lubrication condition, and frequency of use and etc. Finally, this selected the torque as the acceleration factor which is affected mainly to the system and also, the test equipment was developed based on the requirement of the life and performance test.

A Bayesian zero-failure reliability demonstration test method for products with Weibull lifetime distribution is presented. Inverted gamma prior distribution for the scale parameter of the Weibull distribution is used to design the Bayesian test plan and selecting a prior distribution using a prior test information is discussed. A test procedure with zero-failure acceptance criterion is developed that guarantee specified reliability of a product with given confidence level. An example is provided to illustrate the use of the developed Bayesian reliability demonstration test method.

A one-shot device is defined as a product, system, weapon, or equipment that can be used only once. After use, the device is destroyed or must undergo extensive rebuild. Determining the reliability of a one-shot device poses a unique challenge to the manufacturers and users due to the destructive nature and costs of the testing. This paper presents a reliability growth prediction for a one-shot system. It is assumed that 1) test duration is discrete(i.e. trials or rounds); 2) trials are statistically independent; 3) the number of failures for a given system configuration is distributed according to a binomial distribution; and 4) the cumulative expected number of failures through any sequence of configurations is given by AMSAA model. When the system development is represented by three configurations and the number of trials and failures during configurations are given, the AMSAA model parameters and reliability at configuration 3 are estimated by using a reliability growth analysis software. Further, if the reliability growth predictions do not meet the target reliability, the sample size of an additional test is determined for achieving the target reliability.

The failure modes of pneumatic directional control valves include leakage, wear of the spool seal, and sticking of the spool. Among them, the main failure mode of the valve is leakage. The leakage is caused by the wear of the spool seal. However, due to the characteristics of the seal material, the leakage rate is fluctuated a lot rather than constantly increased over time. If life analysis is performed using the first time data of leakage failure, predicted life cycles can be different from the real life cycles. This paper predicts life cycles of the pilot pneumatic directional control valve based on the three point moving average which considers the average of the fluctuating leakage rate.

Since permanent magnet coupling transfers power by magnetic force without contact, it has little shock, vibration, noise. In case of overload, it protects a pump or a motor which is relatively important by slipping internally. In this study, failure analysis and test evaluation on the permanent magnet coupling have been proposed and the process that reliability of the product improves through design improvement has been presented. And failure cause of typical failure case has been investigated and improvement plan has been presented. Finally, reliability improvement is established by analysis of the test results of before and after acceleration test.

The Spinal cage is the cage-shaped implantable medical device used to treat structural abnormalities caused by degenerative intervertebral disks. In order to secure enough space to provide the mechanical stability and the intervertebral fusion, after removing the intervertebral disc, the Spinal cage is transplanted between the intervertebral space. A hammer is used to push the spinal cage into a narrow space during the spinal cage transplant surgery. Due to the impact and pressure, damage occurs frequently on the spinal cage. In this study, a test model is constructed to measure the value of impulse generally applied on the Spinal cage. The figures of internal impulse before and after the improvement of the Spinal cage are then compared to suggest direction to improve the reliability of the spinal cage.

Nuclear power plants may use commercial grade items if they can pass special tests or inspections, which is called Commercial Grade Item Dedication (CGID). Digital items, however, should follow EPRI TR-106439 to be applied to nuclear power plants. This paper explains the scheme and requirements of the EPRI TR-106439 and introduces some guidelines. Firstly, in order to clarify requirements of the EPRI TR-106439, code interpretation is performed. And through case study of digital indicator, limitations of EPRI TR-106439 are mentioned, and improvement direction is proposed.

Solar cells are considered ideal as a clean energy to generate electricity. However, silicon-based photoelectric cells show some shortcomings in efficiency, cost and reliability. This has been a barrier to further commercialization. This paper shows how 40 Inventive Principles can be used in the research and development on the solar cells to improve efficiency, cost and reliability.

In this paper, we consider the problem of determining the confidence level in zero-failure reliability sampling plans when the life distribution is Weibull distribution with a shape parameter m and a scale parameter ${\eta}$. We introduce zero-failure reliability sampling plans for Weibull distribution and investigate some characteristics of zero-failure reliability sampling plans. Finally, We propose new guideline for determining the confidence level in zero-failure reliability sampling plans for assuring $B_x-life$.