Rigid-flexible coupling virtual prototyping-based approach to the failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis

The reliability analysis is a quantification of the sources of failures in a product, with emphasis on the most significant contributors towards the overall product unreliability. As the reliability analysis of complex products is very crucial for analyzing the behavior of the products, many researches have been focused on it in recent decades with a result of many valuable contributions. However, current researches always focus on rigid product, while the product is always a rigid-flexible coupling multibody system, which could affect the accuracy of reliability analysis. This paper is devoted to virtual prototyping-based approach to a fuzzy Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) with the consideration of rigid-flexible coupling virtual prototyping model. This paper discussed proposed approach in detail with three steps: the traditional FMECA method, the fuzzy FMECA method, and the rigid-flexible coupling-based analysis for FEMCA. The cold heading machine is given as an example which demonstrates that the methodology is helpful to reliability analysis. The physical prototyping is also carried out to demonstrate the product reliability.