Modeling and Analysis of Performance Degradation Data for Reliability Assessment: A Review

Reliability engineering plays an important role in the design, manufacture, maintenance, and replacement of industrial products. Over the last few decades, accelerated degradation testing (ADT) has been largely utilized to shorten test durations, reduce the samples needed, and provide sufficient degradation data to ensure the effective reliability assessment of the concerned products. Meanwhile, performance degradation modeling has been recognized as an essential approach to help researchers and producers understand the health conditions of the deteriorating systems. However, the diversity in reliability tests, degradation models, and statistical analysis techniques has increased the difficulty in selecting appropriate reliability assessment methods in specific scenarios. Besides, there are no systematic reviews focused on modeling and analysis of performance degradation data. Therefore, this paper aims to (1) present ADT fundamentals, including the basic theory, ADT methods, accelerated stress variables, type of acceleration models, as well as ADT optimization, (2) comprehensively review current states and future challenges in degradation modeling, (3) discuss the problem of model mis-specification and compare different approaches for parameter estimation, (4) highlight future opportunities and possible directions deserving further research.