Models With Failure Free Life - Applied Review and Extensions

• Main Authors: Shao, Wei Lam, Halim , Tony, Kanesan , Muthusamy
• Format: Article
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/528/

Fundamental engineering considerations in many real-world reliability engineering applications result in the need for using a statistical distribution with a failure free life (FFL) parameter. These include usual failure time models as well as specialized repair time models (for maintenance planning) and breakdown voltage models used for voltage endurance studies of electrical insulations. In this paper, some commonly encountered statistical distributions with failure free life are described together with a review of practical applications. From the literature, the 3-parameter Weibull distribution has been found to be the most common statistical distribution used when failure free life is considered. Some estimation procedures for the 3-parameter Weibull distribution are discussed and a new modified maximum likelihood type approach which leverages on the empirical cumulative distribution function is proposed in this paper. Two case studies considering complete and censored data are discussed. (Authors' abstract)