UN0701 - Engineering Risk and Reliability
(2012 version)

Announcements

This course is offered January 28, 2012, to March 25, 2012.

• Distance Education - If you will be participating in the course using distance education please inform the instructor by email prior to the course commencing. Access distance ed courses using Elluminate at, https://maclive.mcmaster.ca/

Course Description

This course presents a broad treatment of the subject of engineering decision, risk, and reliability. Emphasis is on

• the modelling of engineering problems and evaluation of systems performance under conditions of uncertainty;
• risk-based approach to life-cycle management of engineering systems;
• systematic development of design criteria, explicitly taking into account the significance of uncertainty; and
• logical framework for risk assessment and risk-benefit tradeoffs in decision making.

Prerequisite: Registration in the UNENE Joint M. Eng. Program
Lecturer: Dr. Mahesh Pandey, University of Waterloo (contact information)

Course Schedule

The course is divided into eight separate modules delivered over four weekends:
Course schedule (pdf 22 kb)

Marking Scheme: Assignments 70%, Final Exam 30%

Course Notes

The reference material for the course consists of extensive lecture notes . Please note that the lecture notes are password protected. You will need to register in the course and contact the course assistant to receive the passwords.  Also, please contact us if you have any problem accessing/downloading the notes.

• UN 0701 W2012 Course Notes (pdf 33.2 Mb)

MS-Excel Tutorial

For those students who are unfamiliar with Microsoft Excel, please review the following tutorial(s) prior to the first session.

• Microsoft Excel (2003) Tutorial (pdf 0.5 Mb)
• Microsoft Excel (2007) Tutorial (pdf 0.6 Mb)

Please contact the course assistant if you have any questions or experience any problems.

Problem Sets

• To be posted here...

Additional Information

• Please download the following Excel data files to your laptop, memory stick, etc. to be used in the in-class exercises.
  data1.xls (39 Kb)
  data2.xls(30 Kb)
  data3.xls (46 Kb)
  data4.xls (35 Kb)
  data5.xls (39 Kb)
• Additional files will be posted as required...

References

The main reference for the course will be the lecture notes. Additional references for the course are as follows:

• Any Probability and Statistics textbook used in an engineering program (typically at second year level).
• Ang, A.H-S. and W.H. Tang. 1975. Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning and Design, Volume I - Basic Principles . John Wiley & Sons, New York.
• Ang, A.H-S. and W.H. Tang. 1984. Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning and Design, Volume II - Decision, Risk, and Reliability . John Wiley & Sons, New York.
• Benjamin, J.R. and C.A. Cornell. 1970. Probability, Statistics, and Decision for Civil Engineers . McGraw-Hill, New York.
• Fullwood, R.R. and R.E. Hall. 1988. Probabilistic Risk Assessment in the Nuclear Power Industry: Fundamentals & Applications . Pergamon Press, Oxford.
• McCormick, N.J. 1981. Reliability and Risk Analysis: Methods and Nuclear Power Applications. Academic Press, New York.
• Melchers, R.E. 1999. Structural Reliability Analysis and Prediction (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.