Master of Engineering in Reliability Engineering

Degree Requirements

Master of Engineering: 30 Credits or 10 Courses

Students pursuing this option must complete at least six courses in reliability engineering (ENRE), including:

• ENRE600, Fundamentals of Failure Mechanisms
• ENRE602, Reliability Analysis

Students may not register for more than a total of six credits of ENRE648, Special Problems in Reliability Engineering. For each registration of ENRE648, an approved scholarly paper must be submitted. There is no research or thesis required for this degree.

Graduate Certificate in Engineering: 12 Credits or 4 Courses

Students pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Engineering must complete four courses, including the ones listed below and two other ENRE 600-level courses.

• ENRE600, Fundamentals of Failure Mechanisms
• ENRE602, Reliability Analysis

Courses

ENRE489K Special Topics in Reliability Engineering: Design for Reliability (3 Credits) | Elective

Summer 2024 Class time/details on ELMS Reuel Smith

Design for Reliability (DFR) has become a worldwide goal regardless of the industry. The engineering managers are intent on harvesting the value proposition for competing globally while significantly lowering the life cycle costs. The DFR principles are based on proactively preventing hardware failures, software failures, and product malfunctions. Most experienced engineers are experts in a segment of the field and need to understand the entire field. This is obvious from the NASA Challenger accident, and millions of automobiles recalled by Toyota, GM, and Volkswagen. This science of engineering requires creativity and innovative skills to aim at zero failures and elegant solutions that cost less, which is the aim of this course.

ENRE600 Fundamentals of Failure Mechanisms (3 Credits) | Core

Advanced failure mechanisms in reliability engineering will be taught from a basic materials and defects point of view. The methods of predicting the physics of failure of devices, materials, components, and systems are reviewed. The main emphasis will be given to basic degradation mechanisms through understanding the physics, chemistry, and mechanics of such mechanisms. Mechanical failures are introduced through understanding fatigue, creep, and yielding in materials, devices, and components. The principles of cumulative damage and mechanical yielding theory are taught. The concepts of reliability growth, accelerated life testing, and environmental testing are introduced. Physical, chemical, and thermal-related failures are introduced through a basic understanding of degradation mechanisms such as diffusion, electromigration, defects, and defect migration. The failure mechanisms in basic material types will be taught. Failure mechanisms observed in real electronic devices and electronic packaging will also be presented. Problems related to manufacturing and microelectronics will be analyzed.

Mechanical failures are emphasized from the point of view of complex fatigue theory.

Credit is only granted for ENMA698M, ENNU648M, or ENRE600.

ENRE602 Reliability Analysis (3 Credits) | Core

Principal methods of reliability analysis, including fault tree and reliability block diagrams; Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA); event tree construction and evaluation; reliability data collection and analysis; methods of modeling systems for reliability analysis. Focus on problems related to process industries, fossil-fueled power plant availability, and other systems of concern to engineers.

ENRE620 Mathematical Techniques of Reliability Engineering (3 Credits) | Elective

Basic probability and statistics. Application of selected mathematical techniques to the analysis and solution of reliability engineering problems. Applications of matrices, vectors, tensors, differential equations, integral transforms, and probability methods to a wide range of reliability-related problems.
Also offered as ENNU620.

ENRE640 Collection and Analysis of Reliability Data (3 Credits) | Elective

Basic life model concepts. Probabilistic life models, for components with both time-independent and time-dependent loads. Data analysis, parametric and nonparametric estimation of basic time-to-failure distributions. Data analysis for systems. Accelerated life models. Repairable systems modeling.

Prerequisite: ENRE602.

ENRE641 Probabilistic Physics of Failure and Accelerated Testing (3 Credits) | Elective

Models for life testing at constant stress. Graphical and analytical methods. Test plans for accelerated testing. Competing for failure modes and side effects. Models and data analyses for step and time-varying stresses. Optimizing test plans.
Credit is only granted for ENRE641 or ENRE650. Formerly: ENRE650.

ENRE642 Reliability Engineering Management (3 Credits) | Elective

Summer 2024 Frederick Schenkelberg

Unifying systems perspective of reliability engineering management. Design, development, and management of organizations and reliability programs including management of systems evaluation and test protocols, development of risk management-mitigation processes, and management of functional tasks performed by reliability engineers.

ENRE645 Human Reliability Analysis (3 Credits) | Elective

Methods of solving practical human reliability problems, the THERP, SLIM, OAT, and SHARP methods, performance shaping factors, human-machine systems analysis, distribution of human performance and uncertainty bounds, skill levels, source of human error probability data, examples, and case studies.

Prerequisite: ENRE600 and ENRE602; or permission of ENGR-Materials Science & Engineering department. Credit is only granted for ENRE645 or ENRE734. Formerly: ENRE734.

ENRE648 Special Problems in Reliability Engineering ( Credits) | Elective

Repeatable to 6 credits if content differs. For students who have definite plans for individual study of faculty-approved problems. Credit is given according to the extent of work.

ENRE648B Special Problems in Reliability Engineering; Life Cycle Cost and System Sustainment Analysis (3 Credits) | Elective
(ENME737) An enabling discipline consisting of technologies and methods to assess the reliability of a product in its actual life cycle conditions to determine the advent of failure and mitigate system risk. PHM permits the reliability of a system to be evaluated and predicted in its actual application conditions. In recent years, prognostics and health management (PHM) has emerged as a key enabling technology to provide an early warning of failure; forecast maintenance as needed; reduce maintenance cycles; assess the potential for life extensions; and improve future designs and qualification methods. In the future, PHM will enable systems to assess their real-time performance (self-cognizant health management and diagnostics) under actual usage conditions and adaptively enhance life cycle sustainment with risk-mitigation actions that will virtually eliminate unplanned failures.

ENRE648J Special Problems in Reliability Engineering; Prognostics and Health Management ( Credits) | Elective

(ENME737) An enabling discipline consisting of technologies and methods to assess the reliability of a product in its actual life cycle conditions to determine the advent of failure and mitigate system risk. PHM permits the reliability of a system to be evaluated and predicted in its actual application conditions. In recent years, prognostics and health management (PHM) has emerged as a key enabling technology to provide an early warning of failure; forecast maintenance as needed; reduce maintenance cycles; assess the potential for life extensions; and improve future designs and qualification methods. In the future, PHM will enable systems to assess their real-time performance (self-cognizant health management and diagnostics) under actual usage conditions and adaptively enhance life cycle sustainment with risk-mitigation actions that will virtually eliminate unplanned failures.

ENRE655 Advanced Methods in Reliability Engineering (3 Credits) | Elective

Bayesian methods and applications, estimation of rare event frequencies, uncertainty analysis and propagation methods, reliability analysis of dynamic systems, analysis of dependent failures, reliability of repairable systems, human reliability analysis methods, and theory of logic diagrams and application to systems reliability.

Prerequisite: ENRE602. Credit is only granted for ENRE655 or ENRE665. Formerly: ENRE665.

ENRE670 Probabilistic Risk Assessment (3 Credits) | Elective

Why study risk, sources of risk, overview of Risk Assessment and Risk Management, relation to System Safety and Reliability Engineering; measures, representation, communication, and perception of risk; overview of use of risk assessment results in decision making; overview of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) process; detailed converge of PRA methods including (1) methods for risk scenario development such as identification of initiators, event sequence diagrams, event trees, causal modeling (fault trees, influence diagrams, and hybrid methods), and simulation approaches; (2) methods of risk scenario likelihood assessment, including quantitative and qualitative approaches, as well as uncertainty modeling and analysis. Also covers methods for risk modeling of system hardware behavior, physical phenomena, human behavior, software behavior, organizational environment, and external physical environment. Additional core topics include risk model integration and quantification (Boolean-based, binary decision diagram, Bayesian belief networks, and hybrid methods), simulation-based Dynamic PRA methods (discrete and continuous), and several examples of large-scale PRAs for space missions, nuclear power, aviation, and medical systems.

Prerequisite: ENRE602. Also offered as ENNU651. Credit is only granted for ENNU651 or ENRE670.

ENRE671 Risk Assessment in Engineering (3 Credits) | Elective

General Mechanical

In the course of engineering design, project management, and other functions, engineers have to make decisions, almost always under time and budget constraints. Managing risk requires making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. This course will cover material on individual decision-making, group decision-making, and organizations of decision-makers. The course will present techniques for making better decisions, for understanding how decisions are related to each other, and for managing risk.

Prerequisite: ENRE670. Credit is only granted for ENRE648W or ENRE671. Formerly: ENRE648W.

ENRE684 Information Security (3 Credits) | Elective

This course is divided into three major components: overview, detailed concepts, and implementation techniques. The topics to be covered are general security concerns and concepts from both a technical and management point of view, principles of security, architectures, access control and multi-level security, trojan horses, covert channels, trap doors, hardware security mechanisms, security models, security kernels, formal specifications and verification, networks and distribution systems and risk analysis.

Credit is only granted for ENRE648J or ENRE684. Formerly: ENRE648J.

Online Programs

#6 Online Graduate Engineering Programs - U.S. News and World Report Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs

U.S. Graduate Programs

#19 Graduate Engineering - U.S. News and World Report 2023 Best Engineering Graduate Programs

Specialties:

• #15 Aerospace Engineering
• #16 Electrical Engineering; #15 Computer Engineering
• #17 Mechanical Engineering

Entrepreneurship Rankings

• #7 Undergraduate Program
• #18 Graduate Program

Princeton Review's Top 50 Schools For Entrepreneurship Programs"