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Degradation tests are used when there is a quality characteristic related to the life of a product. In this paper, we investigate the model mis-specification effect on the estimation precision of product's mean time to failure (MTTF) and consider a degradation test design problem. The Wiener and inverse Gaussian (IG) processes are two possible models considered. We derive expressions for the mean and variance of the estimated product's MTTF when the true model is an IG process, but is wrongly fitted by a Wiener process. We further discuss the experimental design problem and derive the explicit functional form of the estimation variances. Using the derived functions, optimal degradation test plans assuming a Wiener process model is correctly or wrongly specified are both proposed. The derived plans are applied to a laser data example. We evaluate the test efficiency of the plans derived from a Wiener process assumption when the model is mis-specified. For many optimization criteria, we observe that the obtained plans are robust even when the fitted model is mis-specified. For some criteria that may result in very different test plans under different models, we use a weighted ratio criterion to find practically useful degradation plans under model uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose an objective Bayesian method to analyze the accelerated degradation model based on the new Wiener process stated in Ye, Chen, and Shen (Reliab. Eng. Syst. Safe., 2015, 139: 58–67). The Jeffreys prior and reference priors are derived after reparameterization, and the posterior properties under each prior are validated. A Metropolis random walk algorithm is then employed to generate samples from the posterior distributions, and a simulation study is carried out to reveal the frequentist properties of these priors. Finally, we apply the approach to a real data and obtain the mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) under the usage condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-objective optimization method for the accelerated degradation test based on Wiener process is proposed in this article in order to solve the problem that a single objective optimization cannot solve the difficulty or even conflicting test configurations caused by different optimization objective functions. An accelerated degradation model is established based on Wiener process, and the unknown parameters are solved by a two-step maximum likelihood estimation method. Considering both the accuracies of life estimation and the model parameter estimation, a multi-objective optimization model is established with the optimization goals of the minimum asymptotic variance of P-quantile of lifetime and the maximum determinant of Fisher information matrix. The Pareto solutions are set by the multi-objective genetic algorithm, and the test configurations for multi-objectives are obtained. Under the step stress accelerated degradation test and the constant stress accelerated degradation test, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by an optimization example of LEDs accelerated degradation test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an exact distribution for the bounded range of a Wiener process by using the truncation method of the probability distributions. Rather than deriving some statistical properties of this distribution including reliability properties, moments, stress-strength parameter, order statistics, Bonferroni curve, Lorenz curve, and Gini's index, a dataset is analyzed to clarify the effectiveness of this distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two Bayesian hierarchical models—one utilizing the life-time data and other using the structural health monitoring (SHM) data, for degradation modeling and reliability assessment of rolling element bearings. The main advantage of the proposed life-time data based model is that, it accounts for the variability in failure times caused due to the difference in material properties, initial degradation, operating and environmental conditions by introducing Bayesian hierarchy in the model parameters. On the other hand, SHM data (such as vibration and strain) based model focuses on stochastic nature of bearing degradation, and models it using a two-phase Wiener process. In this model, the point of phase-transition is the time when the damage initiates. The detection of such a point is undertaken using Bayesian change point algorithms. For both the models, the model parameters and reliability are updated as more data becomes available. In this manner, the prior domain knowledge and life-time data or SHM data collected from the field can effectively be integrated to get updated reliability. Two case studies for rolling element bearings are presented to demonstrate the applicability to life-time as well as SHM data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]