TIMEOUT FOR TECH
MANAGING FAILURE
RISK
When should a component be repaired or replaced? BY GARY T. FRY, PH.D., P.E., VICE PRESIDENT, FRY TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC.
W
elcome to “Timeout for Tech with Gary T. Fry, Ph.D., P.E.” Before we begin, I want to highlight an upcoming RT&S virtual technical conference that will convene on July 14, 2022. The conference theme is Track Geometry and Friction Management. I will be participating and presenting on the “Benefits of Geometry Measurement Automation and Trending.” The full conference program and registration details are available online at https:// w w w.railwayage.com/track-geometry/. 30 Railway Age // June 2022
I hope you will join us! Each month in this ongoing series, we examine a technology topic that professionals in the railway industry have asked to learn more about. This month, we discuss strategies to manage risk of failure. Obviously, this topic is very broad and has applications in every kind of business endeavor and in our everyday lives as well. Narrowing things down a bit, we will focus on the performance of aging engineered systems and specifically on managing the risk of failure of load-bearing components, such as steel rails and steel wheels, that are nearing the end of their intended service lives.
To get started, let’s consider a simple example of a system that exhibits wear and tear and deterioration with use. Figure 1 is a photograph of two steel-toed work boots—one unused and the other clearly near the end of its useful life. If the boot manufacturer follows a strict quality control program, we would expect that the unused boot is representative of the general population of new boots of that model. We hold this expectation because we assume the quality control program results in a narrow bandwidth of variability among a large population of new boots. What about the boot near the end of railwayage.com