Track 2 Session 1
9:10 to 10:10 a.m. Tuesday June 17, 2008

CAE Tools: One of Your Most Valuable Reliability Tools

"We need a solution to this problem yesterday!" How many times have you started off on the path to solving a reliability problem with this phrase, whether stated or just implied? To meet this kind of pressure, the traditional approach is to attack the problem from the test-fix-test-fix mode and hope your first or second trial will provide an acceptable, but not necessarily optimal, solution. This session presents valuable lessons learned and procedures from a recent project that can be applied to future new designs. The old "tried and true" physical test-fix-test-fix methods were abandoned and we applied our most important reliability tools for solving vibration problems. These tools are computer-aided engineering (CAE) modeling, virtual testing and Campbell diagrams. The use of these tools allowed us to identify the most important vibration modes before "virtually" conducting test-fix-test-fix of 18 different scenarios. This virtual testing saved many months of physical testing before actually cutting metal to prototype the final "reliable" design. By using these tools and investing a little more time up-front in the initial design stage you can "virtually" analyze and test many more designs than possible in real life due to time and money constraints.