Design for reliability of a vehicle transmission system

Abstract

Robust vehicle design for improved reliability and quality has been one of the key areas of interest in the automotive industry for a number of years. Based on this approach, reliability is designed into the vehicle following a rigorous vehicle design and development process coupled with appropriate design methods, such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), quality function deployment (QFD), design of experiments (DoE), the Taguchi method, and others. While significant progress has been achieved to date in improving the reliability and quality of vehicles, there is still some need to incorporate parts and subsystems with specific reliability functions within the vehicle system reliability model early in the design concept stage and throughout the vehicle design process so that the reliability of systems and subsystems can be designed-in with more confidence. A comprehensive design for reliability model for critical vehicle systems and subsystems coupled with the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method could help identify and alleviate potential failure modes, and hence maximize vehicle reliability. This article proposes a design for reliability process that aims to achieve this particular outcome in the case of a mechanical vehicle transmission system. A detailed case study involving design for reliability of a vehicle transmission system is presented.