Menu
Search

Reliability Hotwire: Estimating Confidence Bounds on System Reliability in the Absence of Times-to-Failure Data

Reliability HotWire is a monthly eMagazine by ReliaSoft providing information and tips on how to best improve your reliability practices and get the most out of ReliaSoft’s tools for reliability and life data analysis. The article introduces a simulation method of obtaining approximate confidence bounds on system reliability that does not require data for each component but provides results that are closer to the analytical solution.

Hotwire

A common method for obtaining confidence bounds on a system uses the variance of reliability of each component in the system along with the system reliability equation. This analytical method requires that you have failure data for each component in the system. If times-to-failure data are not available for all components (e.g., the reliability information is obtained from a supplier who will share the distribution parameters, but not the actual failure data), some reliability engineers use a worst case/best case method based on the lower or upper confidence bounds for the parameters of the components. However, when data are available to compare the results, this approach provides estimates that are quite far from the analytical solution.

For full article, view: Reliability Hotwire – Issue 195 May 2017

© 2024 Wilde Analysis Ltd.

Web design and hosting by BFI®