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Seminar Description

Traditionally engineering designs have been deemed to be safe by using conservative assumptions. However, the same factor of safety can have a different probability of failure in different situations. As designers go outside the bounds of previous designs, reliability methods allow engineers more freedom to innovate while maintaining consistent levels of safety and leveraging previous experience. In addition, the design process becomes more efficient by allowing engineering and manufacturing resources to be focused where they have the most effect on safety. Allowing risk to be quantified during design also facilitates decisions based on monetary risk.

The seminar will start with an overview of safety engineering principles and move into the definition of the reliability of a component, showing the inconsistencies of traditional safety factors. Common sources of uncertainty will then be outlined, including load uncertainty, strength uncertainty and modelling uncertainty.

A first order, second moment method of combining uncertainties will be presented as a tool to evaluate reliability in place of a deterministic approach. This method uses the mean and standard deviations of uncertain parameters to approximate the safety domain boundary. The techniques are applicable over different fields and can be used with computational methods such as finite element analysis.

It is often necessary and desirable to revisit through-life safety cases within the life span of a machine. This may be due to changes in external risks, changes in loads, changes in operation or machine degradation. Two common through-life phenomena, fatigue cracking and corrosion, may be used to show how an integrity reliability analysis can determine whether a sufficient safety or risk level is maintained or how it may be restored.

By the end of the seminar, participants should understand the benefits of structural reliability assessment, both as a stand-alone result and as part of system risk management. Participants will be taught how to apply the method as well as the underlying theory. Examples will be given to help understand applications.

Outline

• Introduction
• Overview of safety in engineering
• Addressing uncertainty
• Understanding traditional safety factors
• Calculating reliability
• Reliability methods for black box engineering
• Through-life reliability
• Conclusion

Who Should Attend

• Mechanical design engineers
• Stress engineers
• Risk and Safety engineers
• Mechanical engineering managers
• Project managers for mechanical projects

Instructor

Martin Fandrich, BASc, PhD, PEng, MIMechE, CEng - Bannerman Consultants

A second generation engineer, Martin earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at UBC.  Following a PhD in the vibrations research group at the University of Cambridge in England, he built up experience with practical stress and dynamic analysis techniques working on the development of gas turbine engines for Rolls-Royce. He later worked on techniques of marine drive train vibration control prior to commencing full-time engineering consulting. With experience consulting in England, Scotland, the USA and Canada, he is well versed in international best practices.  His exposure to the safety engineering culture in the British nuclear industry led to an appreciation for the key role of technical analysis in managing overall risk.  The founder of Bannerman Consultants, Martin specialises in technical analysis of machines, components and mechanical systems.

What Previous Participants have said about this seminar:

• “Good overview of topic. Enhanced my understanding and gave me a jumping off point for further research."
• "Martin knows very well the topic and this is very good for the people attending the seminar."
• "Good presentation skills - obviously competent in the field."

APEGBC is an AIBC/CES registered provider offering an AIBC-Accredited activity for 6.5 Core Learning Units.

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