MOE251 Risk and reliability engineering

Contents and structure

Risk has become a key concept in modern society. Growing concern about the environment and a number of disasters have served to focus attention on the hazards and risks involved in a wide range of activities from offshore oil production to transport on land and at sea or in the air. There is a wide range of techniques available to assess risk and reliability, both in relation to safety and in the wider sense. This course aims to give knowledge of the theoretical fundament of risk and reliability analyses, and skills to carry out and make use of risk and reliability analyses in real situations.

 

The course is technical and will be taught in four modules with the following content:

Module 1: Introduction to Reliability Engineering and Life Data Analysis

• Basic definitions and concepts
• Statistical theory background and applications
• The most commonly used distributions for product life and their applications
• Product life data types, presented and defined
• Parameter estimation methods and theory
• Confidence bounds determination

Module 2: Introduction to System Reliability

• Fundamentals of system reliability
• Fundamentals of reliability block diagrams (RBDs)
• System reliability determination and optimization
• Utilizing reliability block diagrams for multiple failure mode analysis

Module 3: Introduction to system maintainability and availability

• Repair and downtime distributions and metrics
• Introduction to renewal theory
• Maintainability and availability definitions and calculation
• System-level availability determination, prediction and optimization

Module 4: Risk analysis

• Key concept and basic definitions of risk, uncertainty and vulnerability,
• Basic analysis techniques and main tools and methods for risk analysis.
• Decision-making process, economic aspects, cost / benefit analysis, risk acceptance criteria and ALARP

Learning Outcome

After completing the subject MOE251 the student is able to:

Knowledge

• Account for theoretical concepts and terminology of reliability engineering in the analysis of a system
• Understand and use common methods, tools and techniques of risk and reliability analysis
• Account for basic techniques and tools in analysis of failures and repair data
• Account for basic definition and concept in risk assessment of engineering system

Skills

• Apply basic techniques and tools in analysis of failures and repair data
• Analyze a technical system and its reliability, maintainability and availability
• Plan and implement various methods of risk analysis in connection with engineering of technical systems and processes

Competence

The students will be able to reflect on their professional practice, work and function in a multi-disciplinary team, manage report writing and presentation

Entry requirements

Bachelor degree in Engineering. Some knowledge of probability analysis and stochastic processes of advantage.

Teaching methods

This consists of lectures, project and home exercise. All including exam to be carried out in English language. Mandatory attendance at group work and presentations.

Compulsory learning activities

3 mandatory assignments that (either individually or in groups of 2 students) need to be approved in order to be eligible to take the exam.

Assessment

Exam in two parts:

1. Written exam 3 hours (50% of the final assessment. Re-sit exam may be changed to an oral examination)
2. Project report and home exercise (50% of the final assessment)

Grading scale is A-F where F is fail

Both parts must get a passing grade in order to get a final grade for the course