We conduct reliability analyses for our implantable devices on a continued basis. I’ve spent the last few days readying the data for this period’s analysis, and thought that a short primer on how this is actually done would be of interest to fellow engineers who may need it at some point.
You surely have heard of MTBF = Mean Time Between Failures. This is a key reliability metric. However, since our implantable devices are single-use, the first failure is the final failure, so MTTF = Mean Time To Failure. As such, for a device with no possibility of repair (e.g. implantables, satellites), MTBF=MTTF. Continue reading