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Fides (Latin: trust) is a guide allowing estimated reliability calculation for electronic components and systems. The reliability prediction is generally expressed in FIT (number of failures for 109 hours) or MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). This guide provides reliability data for RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Safety) studies.
Fides is a DGA (French armament industry supervision agency) study conducted by a European consortium formed by eight industrialists from the fields of aeronautics and Defence:
The first aim of the Fides project was to develop a new reliability assessment method for electronic components which takes into consideration COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and specific parts and the new technologies. The global aim is to find a replacement to the worldwide reference MIL-HDBK-217F, [1] which is old and has not been revised since 1995 (issue F notice 2). Moreover, the MIL HDBK 217F is very pessimistic for COTS components which are more and more widely used in military and aerospace systems.
The second aim was to write a reliability engineering guide in order to provide engineering process and tools to improve reliability in the development of new electronic systems.
The Fides guide is made of two distinct parts. The first is a reliability prediction calculation method concerning main electronic component families and complete subassemblies like hard disks or LCD displays. The second part is a process control and audit guide which is a tool to assess the reliability quality and technical know-how in the operating time of the studied product, operational specification and maintenance.
The Fides guide is freely available on the Fides reliability website .
The French standardisation organisation UTE (Union Technique de l'Electricité) has accepted the Fides publication, with the reference UTE C 80 811 (available in both French and English). An international normative reference extension (International Electrotechnical Commission) is planned for the future.
Fides has met great interest and success since the end of the study in 2004. The method has been quickly declared a standard that can be applied to French military programs. For two years, the French military experts of DGA have already used FIDES method in different major programs for Defence, in missiles or tactical telecommunications fields for example.
American companies like Boeing, [2] Japanese organisations like JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) as well as French companies or organisations like EDF (Electricité de France, French electricity provider) or CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, the French space agency) showed an interest in FIDES methodology, but none of them are using FIDES at this time.
Further developments of the Fides guide (such as the improvement of existing models and the widening of the spectrum covered by component families) resulted in a new version of the Fides guide being published in the middle of year 2009.
Configuration management (CM) is a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM process is widely used by military engineering organizations to manage changes throughout the system lifecycle of complex systems, such as weapon systems, military vehicles, and information systems. Outside the military, the CM process is also used with IT service management as defined by ITIL, and with other domain models in the civil engineering and other industrial engineering segments such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings.
Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a mechanical or electronic system, during normal system operation. MTBF can be calculated as the arithmetic mean (average) time between failures of a system. The term is used for repairable systems, while mean time to failure (MTTF) denotes the expected time to failure for a non-repairable system.
Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a type of failure analysis in which an undesired state of a system is examined. This analysis method is mainly used in safety engineering and reliability engineering to understand how systems can fail, to identify the best ways to reduce risk and to determine event rates of a safety accident or a particular system level (functional) failure. FTA is used in the aerospace, nuclear power, chemical and process, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and other high-hazard industries; but is also used in fields as diverse as risk factor identification relating to social service system failure. FTA is also used in software engineering for debugging purposes and is closely related to cause-elimination technique used to detect bugs.
An electrolytic capacitor is a polarized capacitor whose anode or positive plate is made of a metal that forms an insulating oxide layer through anodization. This oxide layer acts as the dielectric of the capacitor. A solid, liquid, or gel electrolyte covers the surface of this oxide layer, serving as the cathode or negative plate of the capacitor. Due to their very thin dielectric oxide layer and enlarged anode surface, electrolytic capacitors have a much higher capacitance-voltage (CV) product per unit volume than ceramic capacitors or film capacitors, and so can have large capacitance values. There are three families of electrolytic capacitor: aluminum electrolytic capacitors, tantalum electrolytic capacitors, and niobium electrolytic capacitors.
Parts stress modelling is a method in engineering and especially electronics to find an expected value for the rate of failure of the mechanical and electronic components of a system. It is based upon the idea that the more components that there are in the system, and the greater stress that they undergo in operation, the more often they will fail.
Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component fails, expressed in failures per unit of time. It is usually denoted by the Greek letter λ (lambda) and is often used in reliability engineering.
Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability describes the ability of a system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Reliability is closely related to availability, which is typically described as the ability of a component or system to function at a specified moment or interval of time.
A United States defense standard, often called a military standard, "MIL-STD", "MIL-SPEC", or (informally) "MilSpecs", is used to help achieve standardization objectives by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Integrated logistic support (ILS) is a technology in the system engineering to lower a product life cycle cost and decrease demand for logistics by the maintenance system optimization to ease the product support. Although originally developed for military purposes, it is also widely used in commercial customer service organisations.
Environmental stress screening (ESS) refers to the process of exposing a newly manufactured or repaired product or component to stresses such as thermal cycling and vibration in order to force latent defects to manifest themselves by permanent or catastrophic failure during the screening process. The surviving population, upon completion of screening, can be assumed to have a higher reliability than a similar unscreened population.
Failure mode effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) is an extension of failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA).
Worst-case circuit analysis is a cost-effective means of screening a design to ensure with a high degree of confidence that potential defects and deficiencies are identified and eliminated prior to and during test, production, and delivery.
Reliability of semiconductor devices can be summarized as follows:
A tantalum electrolytic capacitor is an electrolytic capacitor, a passive component of electronic circuits. It consists of a pellet of porous tantalum metal as an anode, covered by an insulating oxide layer that forms the dielectric, surrounded by liquid or solid electrolyte as a cathode. Because of its very thin and relatively high permittivity dielectric layer, the tantalum capacitor distinguishes itself from other conventional and electrolytic capacitors in having high capacitance per volume and lower weight.
A reliability block diagram (RBD) is a diagrammatic method for showing how component reliability contributes to the success or failure of a redundant. RBD is also known as a dependence diagram (DD).
A prediction of reliability is an important element in the process of selecting equipment for use by telecommunications service providers and other buyers of electronic equipment, and it is essential during the design stage of engineering systems life cycle. Reliability is a measure of the frequency of equipment failures as a function of time. Reliability has a major impact on maintenance and repair costs and on the continuity of service.
Physics of failure is a technique under the practice of reliability design that leverages the knowledge and understanding of the processes and mechanisms that induce failure to predict reliability and improve product performance.
Sherlock Automated Design Analysis is a software tool developed by DfR Solutions for analyzing, grading, and certifying the expected reliability of products at the circuit card assembly level. Based on the science of Physics of Failure, Sherlock predicts failure mechanism-specific failure rates over time using a combination of finite element method and material properties to capture stress values and first order analytical equations to evaluate damage evolution. The software is designed for use by design and reliability engineers and managers in the electronics industry. DfR Solutions is based in Beltsville, Maryland, USA, and was acquired by ANSYS, Inc. in May 2019.
ISO 13849 is a safety standard which applies to parts of machinery control systems that are assigned to providing safety functions. The standard is one of a group of sector-specific functional safety standards that were created to tailor the generic system reliability approaches, e.g., IEC 61508, MIL-HDBK-217, MIL-HDBK-338, to the needs of a particular sector. ISO 13849 is simplified for use in the machinery sector.
The Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) is a university research facility focused on risk assessment, management, and mitigation for electronic products and systems. CALCE is the largest electronic products and systems research center focused on electronics reliability and is dedicated to providing a knowledge and resource base to support the development of competitive electronic components, products, and systems. CALCE is located at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and was founded by Professor Michael Pecht.
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