Dr. Groth started the event by talking a little bit about her job as a mechanical and reliability engineer. Her work in engineering is more behind the scenes; she makes sure that systems are safe and reliable. The main project that she is working on is developing safe hydrogen fuel stations for cars, which comes with many potential safety concerns. Through designing systems like these, a team of experts like Dr. Groth works together to create safety codes and regulations that determine what would be considered dangerous in different places. She discussed the process that goes into creating these regulations, emphasizing the risk assessment phase. In particular, she discussed quantitative risk analysis and how it is calculated through a special equation. The equation is a crucial component in determining the Fatal Accident Rate (FAR). Taking a step back, she described event sequence diagrams that help calculate the probabilities of all the possible scenarios linked to a system. These diagrams fall under the entire five-step process of the quantitative risk assessment of a system. With this background information, Dr. Groth presented a challenge to determine whether it is safe enough to install a hydrogen fuel station inside a warehouse with 50 workers to power hydrogen forklifts. She explained the potential risks surrounding hydrogen fuel stations, most notably that hydrogen is extremely flammable. The possible scenarios of no ignition, a jet fire, causing one fatality, or worst of all, an explosion that killed half of the warehouse workers were presented through an event sequence diagram. We were tasked with finding the probability of each scenario occurring, given the likelihood of each component of the system working correctly. With these probabilities, we were able to calculate the FAR and determine whether we thought that this system was safe enough according to national FAR data. In the end, Dr. Groth revealed that this particular system had very low risk, significantly less than the national averages, and would therefore be safe to use.
Like the previous event, I was exposed to a deep dive into the processes and elements that engineers consider when designing a system. Complex engineering systems are at the center of nearly all sectors of our economy, including energy, defense, and transportation. Reliability engineers like Dr. Groth must make sure that systems are safe and reliable by assessing their potential weaknesses and chances for failure, before they are actually utilized to prevent the hazard of a system failure leading to an accident. They must be knowledgeable about what the system is supposed to do, how things could fail, and develop strategies in the design, operation, and maintenance of the system. A major component of determining whether a system is safe or not is a risk assessment. The two components of a risk assessment are risk analysis and risk management. Risk analysis is used to identify possible failures, as well as their potential consequences and likelihood. Risk management involves the input of experts on the source of the risks, strategies to reduce them, and what to prioritize. There are also two types of risk assessment - qualitative, which involves opinions and appearances, and what is more commonly seen by the average person, and quantitative, which is the process engineers use that involves data and calculations. I learned that there is actually an equation to calculate such a broad concept like risk; it includes the possible scenarios, probabilities, consequences, often called the "risk triplet." It is a critical component in finding the Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) of different professions in the United States. FAR is the expected fatalities per 100 million hours of work by 1000 people working full time for 50 years; across all jobs nationwide, the FAR was 1.8 in 2015. I was surprised by how Dr. Groth presented the event sequence diagram as actually being a visual depiction of the equation, allowing it to make far more sense to me! Hydrogen fuel dispenser systems, currently being developed by engineers like Dr. Groth, which I am surprised are not talked about more, as I learned that they are portable, have zero emissions, and have fast refueling. Each component of the system plays an essential role in determining whether it fails or not, which was highlighted by the chain of events that the initial hydrogen leak detection system's failure could lead to deadly jet fires or even explosions of the system. Overall, I learned that the processes used by reliability engineers are crucial in determining the safety of systems used by people every day, and the fact that a system hasn't failed yet, doesn't mean that it won't in the future!
A risk assessment can be applied to virtually any decision-making process; though prevalent in, it is not exclusive to only engineering. Running through a risk assessment in my mind is not nearly when they are done by engineers, but can lead to better decision making, as it would cause me to stop and think about the potential consequences that would stem from a given decision more critically. This would be beneficial across all areas of my life, especially school; I could use it in evaluating things such as whether I should finish working on a school project or spend time with friends, which would lend the risk of not finishing the project on time. Going back to more STEM-related applications, thinking about seemingly complex equations visually could be beneficial in engineering, or even analyzing data, in that the components are presented in a way that would allow me to actually see what could lead to a particular scenario, which would be an arrow going from a box representing a component to another shaped box representing an outcome. Making a system as reliable as possible provides an engineer (which I aspire to be one day), with a better approach or, in other words, sets them on the proper course for designing a successful and reliable system. This confirms that it is often the first step in selecting or even developing a system's design. The anecdote that the purpose of a ship is not to be docked in a harbor, Dr. Groth shared, displays the true importance of being aware, not afraid of possible failures in a system, as it leads to designing the safest and most reliable system.
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