Critical / complex systems require meticulous design, analysis, verification, and validation. The goal is to minimize prototype failures, root cause analysis and design cycles, and avoid field failures and safety events.
Indeed, end customers of such systems often require safety, diagnostics, reliability, and logistic support analyses according to relevant standards.
Some engineers see these analyses as a nuisance, but system design can greatly benefit from them.
Enter MBSE
The term MBSE (Model Based System Engineering) has grown in popularity over the past few years. However, MBSE has been employed for many years, albeit under different names. For example: Whenever an electrical engineer uses a CAD to design a circuit board, he is doing MBSE.
Advanced software exists today that simplifies system modelling, improves traceability, and conducts analysis and simulations. Using the right tool for the job saves a lot of time and allows you to benefit from the analyses.
Following are key MBSE analyses that can help you make better design decisions:
When designing complex electronic circuits, design errors are inevitable. Standard DRCs miss many of them, leading to long and expensive design cycles.
BQR’s model-based circuit analysis tools (fiXtress et CircuitHawk) let you detect hidden design errors before layout, including:
-Advanced DRC with user defined rules
-Circuit simulation for component stresses
-Component derating analysis
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis has been around for many years. Its goal is to identify single points of failure as well as failure modes with severe effects. Additionally, FMEA is the basis for testability / diagnostics analysis as well as FTA.
BQR’s FMEA / FMECA software includes:
-CAD software plug-in which lets you easily divide your circuit into functions
-Electronic components failure modes library
-Flexible Risk Matrix that supports all major standards
-Integration with BQRs MTBF prediction software
-Testability / Diagnostics Analysis
Critical systems often include redundancies and backups to provide high reliability / availability. During initial design a “reliability allocation” is often conducted for a rough design of redundancies architecture.
When the detailed design is available, a more elaborate reliability model is analyzed.
BQR’s Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) software let you:
-Easily model complex systems
-Account for various redundancies (hot / cold, stand-by, spare parts)
-Sensitivity analysis
-Numerical analysis and Monte Carlo simulation
Critical systems require a functional safety analysis to ensure the system complies with safety requirements. Such systems include built in tests, fault tolerance and/or backups. Therefore severe safety events usually result from combinations of failure modes. Such events are analyzed by FTA (Fault Tree Analysis).
Logiciel FTA de BQR let you:
-Easily model complex safety events
-Account for various redundancies and protection layers
-Sensitivity analysis
-Integration with BQR’s FMECA
The Corona virus and global events have caused major supply chain disruptions in many industries. This demonstrates the importance of Logistic Support Analysis (LSA). Model based LSA lets you optimize the logistic strategy for your system, including:
-Spare part provisions
-Stock locations
-Repair or discard
-Vendors selection
ApmOptimizer de BQR is a unique model-based tool that lets you:
-Calculate your system expected life cycle cost
-Optimize the logistic support strategy.
Leading companies are using BQR’s MBSE tools for analysis and data driven decision making. This improves the system safety, reliability and maintainability.