ABSTRACT
RELIABILITY TERMS MTBF-Mean time between failures, !-t. When applied to repairable products, this is
the average time a system will operate until the next failure. Failure rate-The number of failures per unit of stress. The stress can be time (e.g.,
machine failures per shift), load cycles (e.g., wing fractures per 100,000 deflections of six inches), impacts (e.g., ceramic cracks per 1,000 shocks of 5 g's each), or a variety of other stresses. The failure rate e = 1 / !-t.
