Spacecraft Reliability and Multi-State Failures

SPACECRAFT RELIABILITY AND MULTI-STATE FAILURES
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SPACECRAFT RELIABILITY AND MULTI-STATE FAILURES

A STATISTICAL APPROACH

The aerospace community has long recognized and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of reliability for space systems. Despite this, little has been published in book form on the topic. Spacecraft Reliability and Multi-State Failures addresses this gap in the literature, offering a unique focus on spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of system and subsystem anomalies and failures.

The authors provide new results pertaining to spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of on-orbit anomaly and failure data that will be particularly useful to spacecraft manufacturers and designers, for example in guiding satellite (and subsystem) test and screening programs and providing an empirical basis for subsystem redundancy and reliability growth plans. The authors develop nonparametric results and parametric models of spacecraft and spacecraft subsystem reliability and multi-state failures, quantify the relative contribution of each subsystem to the failure of the satellites thus identifying the subsystems that drive spacecraft unreliability, and propose advanced stochastic modeling and analysis tools for the reliability and survivability of spacecraft and space-based networks.

Spacecraft Reliability and Multi-State Failures

• provides new nonparametric results pertaining to spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of on-orbit anomaly and failure data

• develops parametric models of spacecraft and spacecraft subsystem reliability and multi-state failures

• quantifies the relative contribution of each subsystem to the failure of the satellites

• proposes advanced stochastic modeling and analysis tools for the reliability and survivability of spacecraft and space-based networks

• provides a dedicated treatment of the reliability and subsystem anomalies of communication spacecraft in geostationary orbit.

Autorentext

Joseph Homer Saleh and Jean-François Castet, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Zusammenfassung
SPACECRAFT RELIABILITY AND MULTI-STATE FAILURES ] SPACECRAFT RELIABILITY AND MULTI-STATE FAILURES A STATISTICAL APPROACH The aerospace community has long recognized and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of reliability for space systems. Despite this, little has been published in book form on the topic. Spacecraft Reliability and Multi-State Failures addresses this gap in the literature, offering a unique focus on spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of system and subsystem anomalies and failures. The authors provide new results pertaining to spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of on-orbit anomaly and failure data that will be particularly useful to spacecraft manufacturers and designers, for example in guiding satellite (and subsystem) test and screening programs and providing an empirical basis for subsystem redundancy and reliability growth plans. The authors develop nonparametric results and parametric models of spacecraft and spacecraft subsystem reliability and multi-state failures, quantify the relative contribution of each subsystem to the failure of the satellites thus identifying the subsystems that drive spacecraft unreliability, and propose advanced stochastic modeling and analysis tools for the reliability and survivability of spacecraft and space-based networks. Spacecraft Reliability and Multi-State Failures

• provides new nonparametric results pertaining to spacecraft reliability based on extensive statistical analysis of on-orbit anomaly and failure data
• develops parametric models of spacecraft and spacecraft subsystem reliability and multi-state failures
• quantifies the relative contribution of each subsystem to the failure of the satellites
• proposes advanced stochastic modeling and analysis tools for the reliability and survivability of spacecraft and space-based networks
• provides a dedicated treatment of the reliability and subsystem anomalies of communication spacecraft in geostationary orbit.

Inhalt
1 On time, reliability, and spacecraft 1

1.1 On time and reliability 1

1.1.1 Reliability: from the word to the engineering discipline 1

1.1.2 Brief (pre)history of reliability engineering: the enablers and the catalyst 2

1.2 On spacecraft and reliability: early studies 4

1.2.1 Overview of early spacecraft reliability and on-orbit failure studies 6

1.2.2 Beyond the failure rate emphasis in spacecraft reliability studies 7

1.3 Book organization 7

2 Nonparametric reliability analysis of spacecraft failure data 9

2.1 Introduction 9

2.2 Database and data description 10

2.3 Nonparametric analysis of spacecraft failure data 11

2.3.1 Complete versus censored data set 11

2.3.2 Empirical reliability function from a complete data set 13

2.3.3 KaplanMeier estimator 14

2.3.4 KaplanMeier plot of satellite reliability 16

2.4 Confidence interval analysis 17

2.5 Discussion and limitation 20

2.A Appendix 21

3 Parametric analysis and Weibull modeling of spacecraft reliability 23

3.1 Weibull distribution: an overview 24

3.2 Probability plots or graphical estimation 25

3.2.1 Procedure 25

3.2.2 Weibull plot and Weibull fit of spacecraft reliability 25

3.2.3 Advantages and limitations of the graphical estimation method 26

3.3 Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) 27

3.3.1 MLE derivation of a Weibull distribution 28

3.3.2 MLE Weibull fit for spacecraft reliability 30

3.4 Comparative analysis of the spacecraft reliability parametric fits 31

3.4.1 MLE versus graphical estimation Weibull fits 31

3.4.2 MLE Weibull versus MLE lognormal fits 33

3.5 Finite mixture distributions 33

3.5.1 Methods for estimating parameters of mixture distributions 34

3.5.2 The 2-Weibull mixture distribution of spacecraft reliability 36

3.6 Comparative analysis of the single versus the mixture distribution Weibull fits 38

4 Data specialization: statistical analysis of spacecraft reliability by orbit and mass categories 43

4.1 Introduction 43

4.2 Data description and mass categorization 45

4.3 Nonparametric analysis of satellite reliability by mass category 46

4.4 Parametric analysis of satellite reliability by mass category 48

4.4.1 MLE of single Weibull fit 49

4.4.2 Mixture distributions 51

4.4.3 Failure rates 54

4.5 Orbit characterization 56

4.6 Nonparametric analysis of spacecraft reliability by mass and orbit category 57

4.7 Parametric analysis of satellite reliability by mass and orbit category 60

4.8 Hypotheses for causal explanations 61

4.8.1 Testing 63

4.8.2 Procurement and parts selection 63

4.8.3 Factors intrinsically related to the design of the spacecraft 64

4.8.4 Factors related to the space environment 65

4.A Appendix: Tabular data and confidence interval analysis 67

4.A.1 Tabular data for the nonparametric reliability results in Figure 4.1 and Figure 4.8 67

4.A.2 Confidence interval analysis 68

5 Spacecraft subsystem reliability 71

5.1 Spacecraft subsystem identification 71

5.2 Nonparametric reliability analysis of spacecraft subsystems 72

5.3 Weibull modeling of spacecraft subsystem reliability 75

5.4 Comparative analysis of subsystem failures 78

6 Time to anomaly and failure of spacecraft subsystems: exploratory data analysis 83

6.1 Introduction 83

6.2 Anomaly and failure events 84

6.3 Distribution of anomalies and failure events by subsystem 86

6.4 Time to anomaly and failure of spacecraft subsystems 90

7 Multi-state failure analysis of spacecraft subsystems 97

7.1 Introduction 97

7.2 Setting the stage: multi-state failure analysis and the state transition diagram 99 7.3 Nonpar…