IEEE Transactions on Reliability

The proportional intensity model (PIM) has been used to model the intensity function of repairable systems taking non-time factors, such as operating conditions, and repair history, into consideration. This paper develops a kernelized PIM (KPIM) by combining the PIM and the kernel method to consider a scenario where a repairable system experiences piecewise operating conditions. The kernel method ... View full abstract»

The cumulative exposure model (CEM) is often used to express the failure probability model in step-stress accelerated life tests (SSALT). This probability model is widely accepted because accumulation of fatigue is considered to be reasonable. Contrary to this assumption, the memoryless model (MM) is also used in electrical engineering because accumulation of fatigue is not observed in some cases.... View full abstract»

A common concern with Markov reliability and reward models is that model parameters, i.e., component failure and repair rates, are seldom perfectly known. This paper proposes a numerical method based on the Taylor series expansion of the underlying Markov chain stationary distribution (associated to the reliability and reward models) to propagate parametric uncertainty to reliability and performab... View full abstract»

Diagnosis of intermittent failures is relevant for productive processes which sustain a high level of maintenance caused by failures. Systems including electrical contacts suffer a considerable amount of intermittent failures which are usually not diagnosed. A characterization of the failure dynamics may save unnecessary repairs, and enable a better planning component substitution. This paper pres... View full abstract»

To identify the critical components or sets of components in a system, various importance measures have been proposed with different probabilistic perspectives and applications. Many of these importance measures are actually related to each other in some ways. This paper summarizes the importance measures in reliability, and presents relations and comparisons among them, focusing on their interrel... View full abstract»

Introducing redundancy at the device-level has been proposed as the most effective way to improve reliability. With the remarkable reliability of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors the semiconductor industry was able to fabricate, the research on device-level redundancy has reduced. However, the increasing sensitivity to noise and variations (due to the massive scaling)... View full abstract»

The effect of single event transient (SET) on reliability has become a significant concern for digital circuits. This paper proposed an algorithm for evaluating the reliability for SET on digital circuits, based on signal probability, universal generating function technique, and generalized reliability block diagrams. The algorithm provides an expression for the reliability of SET under considerat... View full abstract»

This paper develops two techniques to analyse the performance of a stochastic-flow network (SFN) model, considering correlated failures. The first approach utilizes a correlated binomial distribution to characterize the failure behavior of the physical lines and routers internal to the individual edges and nodes in the network. The second employs a simulation technique, which can characterize corr... View full abstract»

Network reliability is an important part of planning, designing, and controlling networks. Now, the most general binary-state network (BSN) reliability evaluation methods are based on Minimal Paths (MPs), or Minimal Cuts (MCs). The universal generating function method (UGFM) is a novel, efficient scheme for determining network reliability. Because the current best-known UGFM can only search for al... View full abstract»

The lumen degradation of light emitting diodes subject to increasing stress loading is investigated by using a cumulative damage model. The cumulative damage process is taken as a Wiener diffusion process with a drift which depends on two stress loadings. General statistical inferences on the parameters and percentiles of the light emitting diode lifetime distribution are presented based on the cu... View full abstract»

This paper develops a prognostics model to estimate the Mean Residual Life of Rail Wagon Bearings within certain confidence intervals. The prognostics model is constructed using a Proportional Hazards approach, informed by imperfect data from a bearing acoustic monitoring system, and a failure database. The model supports prediction within a defined maintenance planning window from the time of rec... View full abstract»

This paper presents a self-tuning framework for the diagnosis of routine alarms in steam turbine generators utilizing a combination of inductive machine learning and knowledge-based heuristics. The techniques provide a novel basis for initializing and updating time series feature extraction parameters used in the automated decision support of vibration events due to operational transients. The dat... View full abstract»

This note studies the block replacement policy with general repairs for an operating system subject to shocks occurring according to a non-homogeneous pure birth process. A shock causes the system to fail. There are two types of failures: a type-I failure (minor failure) is fixed by a general repair, whereas a type-II failure (catastrophic failure) is removed by an unplanned (or unscheduled) repla... View full abstract»

A stochastic model is introduced to investigate the security of network systems based on their vulnerability graph abstractions. Instead of doing traditional security analysis, this paper employs the increasing convex order to study the underlying vulnerability graph. The results of this paper can provide an insight on designing a more secure system, as well as an insight on enhancing the security... View full abstract»

Long-lived software systems evolve through new product releases, which involve up-gradation of previous released versions of the software in the market. But, upgrades in software lead to an increase in the fault content. Thus, for modeling the reliability growth of software with multiple releases, we must consider the failures of the upcoming upgraded release, and the failures that were not debugg... View full abstract»

We consider a mission-based reliability system that is designed to perform missions consisting of a random sequence of phases or stages with random durations. The mission process is described by a Markov process, and the deterioration of the system is described by a finite state Markov process whose parameters depend on the mission process. We discuss several performance measures, including missio... View full abstract»

The characteristics of the failure times of components in a series system are estimated from observed system failure times and causes of failure. Usually this situation is also approached from a competing risks model viewpoint where, in case of statistical independence, the lifetime of each component may be estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method (KM) . For simplicity, we consider only two com... View full abstract»

We propose a new model which generalizes the linear m-consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system to the case of the m-consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system with l-overlapping runs. The new system is called the m-consecutive-k, l-out-of-n:F system, and consists of linearly ordered components such that the system fails iff there are at least m l-overlapping runs of k consecutive failed components. The number of path... View full abstract»

The consecutive k -out-of-n systems are important structures in reliability engineering due to their applications in various real life situations. In this paper, we study the residual lifetime of these systems under the condition that the total number of failed components at time t1 is r , and at time t2 (t2 >; t<... View full abstract»

We will discuss the reliability analysis of a series system under accelerated life tests when interval data are observed, while the components are assumed to have statistically independent exponential lifetime distributions. In a series system, the system fails if any of the components fails. It is common to include masked data in which the component that causes failure of the system is not observ... View full abstract»

Left- and right-censored life time data arise naturally in one-shot device testing. An experimenter is often interested in identifying the effects of several stress variables on the lifetime of a device, and furthermore multiple-stress experiments controlling simultaneously several variables, result in reducing the experimental time as well as the cost of the experiment. Here, we present an expect... View full abstract»

We develop a new warranty policy with respect to the failure time and warranty servicing time, where those two variables are statistically correlated in bivariate distributions. Based on the developed approaches, we investigate the properties of the bivariate function, and obtain the number of warranty services in a warranty period using the field data. The warranty service includes the repair ser... View full abstract»

In the printed version of the above titled paper (ibid., vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 526-532, June 2012), a conversion error printed incorrect and misnumbered equations. The correct equations are presented here. View full abstract»