Recent Headlines:

Defense:

Picatinny Arsenal Plays Key Role in Ensuring Software Reliability – Army

As the U.S. Army replaces its aging fleet of armored personnel carriers, Picatinny Arsenal is playing a crucial role in ensuring that the software for the new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, or AMPV, meets rigid standards of performance.

Army Upgrading Apache’s 40-Year-Old Sensors – Defense Systems

Parts of the military’s modernization efforts are focusing on upgrading and retrofitting established platforms with newer sensors to increase accuracy and lethality.

HII Announces Successful Completion of Endurance Testing for Proteus Undersea Vehicle – Naval-Technology

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has announced the successful completion of endurance testing for the dual-mode manned or unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) Proteus, developed by the company’s Undersea Solutions Group (USG) subsidiary and Battelle.

Researcher Investigates Surface Erosion in Naval Vessel Components – UMASS LOWELL

The Navy recently awarded Amirkhizi with a three-year grant totaling more than $300,000 to find the mechanisms of premature wear, damage or failure in materials exposed to cavitation conditions.

Automotive:

How Reliable Will Your New Car Be? – Cars Guide

This information is available here but the car companies have an agreement among themselves to keep it top secret.

Most Reliable Small Cars 2016 – Auto Express

The UK’s biggest car customer satisfaction survey asked motorists to rate their car’s reliability and the results from owners of small cars make very interesting reading.

Rolling Stock:

High Reliability Has a Role on Trains and Oil Rigs – Electronics Weekly

In the oil and gas and rail industries the need to ensure high reliability is an everyday design challenge but now more is being demanded from these systems and from the designers who develop them.

Space/Aviation:

Wolfspeed GaN RF Devices Demonstrate Reliability to Perform in Harsh Space Environments – Yahoo!

Wolfspeed, A Cree Company, announced that its GaN-on-SiC RF power transistors have completed testing to demonstrate compliance with NASA reliability standards for satellite and space systems.

Medical/Health:

How to Care for Medical Devices When They Have Left the Nest – Medical Design Technology

In January 2016 the FDA issued a draft guidance document, “Postmarket Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices,” that outlines considerations for cybersecurity throughout a medical product’s lifecycle, particularly with regards to maintenance.

Controlling the Flow Rate of Inert Gases in Medical Equipment – Scientist Live

Parker Hannifin has unveiled its VSO LowPro miniature proportional valve for controlling the flow rate of inert gases in medical equipment.

Why Medical Devices Aren’t Safer – NY Times

Things sometimes go wrong with airbags, food and drugs, prompting recalls. It can also happen with medical devices, though you’d think lifesaving devices like heart defibrillators or artificial hips would be closely monitored.

Industrial:

ABS Issues New Condition Monitoring Guidance – Marine Log

Clasification society ABS has published two documents to help industry with condition monitoring.

Solid Foundations Increase Rotating Equipment Reliability – Pumps & Systems

Baseplate failures are often difficult to identify in the field but can be correlated to reoccurring performance issues in mounted equipment.

Flake-like Nanoparticles Offer Reliable Rust Protection – Science Daily

Various techniques are used to prevent the corrosive substances from penetrating into the material, including the creation of an anti-corrosion coating by applying layers of zinc-phosphate. Now, research scientists have developed a special type of zinc-phosphate nanoparticles.

Electronics:

Improving Transistor Reliability – Semiconductor Engineering

One of the more important challenges in reliability testing and simulation is the duty cycle dependence of degradation mechanisms such as negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and hot carrier injection (HCI). For example, as previously discussed, both the Screen Shot 2015-04-30 at 1.41.21 PM shift due to NBTI and the recovery of baseline behavior are very dependent on device workload.

Sony Semiconductor Quality and Reliability HandBook – SONY

This handbook was created for the purpose of introducing Sony’s approach toward maintaining and controlling semiconductor quality and reliability to customers who are currently using Sony semiconductor products and to potential customers who are considering their use in the future.

Commercial:

Frequently Asked Questions On Fiber Reliability (PDF) – Corning

White Paper.

Software:

A Generalized Fault-Detection Software Reliability Model Subject to Random Operating Environments – Springer Link

In this paper, we develop a generalized software reliability model incorporating the uncertainty of fault-detection rate per unit of time in the operating environments.

Statistics for Software – PayPal Engineering

Software development begins as a quest for capability, doing what could not be done before. Once that what is achieved, the engineer is left with the how. In enterprise software, the most frequently asked questions are, “How fast?” and more importantly, “How reliable?”

Human Factors:

Predicting Human Reliability Under Workload and Skill Performance – Science Direct

This paper presents a parametric approach to human reliability analysis. It considers three important factors that mitigate human reliability in a task environment.

Human Reliability Analysis for Automatic Train Supervision – Science Direct

Although the train traffic operation centre remains the nerve centre where decisions are taken by human operators, this study takes into account human reliability and man-machine interaction reliability.

Research:

The Reliability of Material Simulations Put to Test – Space Daily

Several international scientists from over 30 universities and institutes teamed to investigate to what extent quantum simulations of material properties agree when they are performed by different researchers and with different software.