Physical and reliability aspects of failure in mechanical objects

Mechanical objects are operated in real world where degradation of material components and variability of processes managed by a man are the main factors influencing its efficiency. Machine degradation is a longlasting process concerning its material structure, components and connections. Loss of machine operations ability is due to failures caused by wear and tear, fatigue, corrosion, overloading, material ageing and many other destructive processes. It is observed close relation between failure modes and reliability models so that knowledge about failures may help analysts creating reliability models and determine the best operational decisions. In the paper it is discussed relation between physical phenomenon and theoretical models as a common platform of decision processes.