Reliability Assessment Based on Performance Degradation Data

The traditional reliability assessment methods are based on failure lifetime data.The failure lifetime data of high-reliability long-lifetime products are obtained difficultly by life test and accelerated life test.Degradation data can provide with useful information about the reliability assessment for these products.In this paper,the method based on performance degradation path and the ones based on distribution of performance degradation measures are proposed to assessing reliability of high-reliable long-lifetime products with degradation failure mechanism.In the first method,we choose an appropriate model of degradation path,and then fit degradation data to the degradation path with which pseudo failure life data can be obtained by extrapolating the degradation path to a certain critical value,so reliability information can be obtained by the analysis of pseudo failure life data.In the second method,we first compute the statistical characteristics of the amount of degradation at different measurements,and then fit the statistical characteristics to functions of time.We can assess the reliability of products with the relationship between reliability and the distribution of degradation amount.Finally,this paper gives a case to apply the two methods whose results demonstrate that the methods are correct and valid.