Date of Award

12-1997

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Industrial and Entrepreneurial Engineering and Engineering Management

Department

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Franklin K. Wolf

Second Advisor

Dr. Azim Houshyar

Third Advisor

Dr. Bob White

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The reliability engineers have been using different techniques and a good number of theoretical models to analyze and predict the performance of the designed systems and products. While, most of the engineers working in the area of life analysis, have been using the empirical model named Iowa systems of curves to analyze and forecast the service life of industrial properties. Two different groups of experts have obviously been working toward almost the same objective but using different techniques and tools. The purpose of this study is to introduce to reliability engineers the Iowa systems of curves and compare this empirical model's pros and cons with existing theoretical models of reliability engineering.

The finding from this study suggested that: (a) Iowa systems of curves are more intuitive compare to other existing theoretical models, (b) the empirical model undoubtedly covers an equal range of distributions compare to other reliability models and may sometimes work even better, and (c) the forecasting capability of Iowa system is better than the existing reliability models.

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