Failure mode and effect analysis on safety critical components of space travel

Abstract

Sending men to space has never been an ordinary activity, it requires years of planning and preparation in order to have a chance of success. The payoffs of reliable and repeatable space flight are many, including both Commercial and Military opportunities. In order for reliable and repeatable space flight to become a reality, catastrophic failures need to be detected and mitigated before they occur. It can be shown that small pieces of a design which seem ordinary can create devastating impacts if not designed and tested properly. This paper will address the use of a Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) with modified Risk Priority Number (RPN) and its application to safety critical design components of shuttle liftoff. An example will be presented here which specifically focuses on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) to illustrate the FMECA approach to reliable space travel.

Enhancing Safety in IoT Systems: A Model-Based Assessment of a Smart Irrigation System Using Fault Tree Analysis

“…Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a proactive approach in safety-critical domains. It identifies and evaluates the potential failure modes of a system, assessing their impact on safety, reliability, and performance [14,64]. FMEAs are often attributed to the US military, who first utilised this technique in the late 1940s to mitigate potential failures and minimise sources of variation during munitions production [20,65].…”

Application of scenario-driven hazard analysis in the solid rocket booster

“…By cutting out nearly 40 steps to move these parts cut down a lot of risk factors. Recently, SRB failure analysis has been extensively studied by using Monte Carlo simulation [7,10], Hazard Platform [11], fuzzy FMEA [12], Failure analysis [13], Cause-consequence analysis [14], FMEA [15], Bayesian method [16], Critical safety analysis [17] There are many risks that NASA encountered during the development of the solid rocket booster. This study shows that by implementing a risk assessment process, such as scenario-driven hazard analysis (SDHA), these risks could be decreased.…”

SRB Field Joints Failure Analysis Using Fuzzy FMEA

“…First, let's be realistic, that unless the individuals or teams involved in the design and construction applied the findings and recommendations presented in an FMEA to heart, even a fuzzy FMEA (Jenab & Moslehpour, 2015;Jenab et al, 2015a;Jenab et al, 2015b;Jenab & Kelley, 2015;Jenab & Pineau, 2015) One improvement would have been to better define the criticality rating variables to allow for better definitions and separation from their neighbors as shown in Table 4. The variables Numbers are the severity, 'S' denotes stage or time factor that may affect the overall severity, 'R' denotes redundancy if in place would reduce the probability of failure, and 'N' denotes non-existent criticality.…”