A Generalized Result for Degradation Model-Based Reliability Estimation

Reliability estimation based on degradation model is a feasible and low-cost alternative used to estimate reliability for highly reliable systems when the failure-time data are rare. Based on reliability estimation by degradation modeling, preventive maintenance work orders need to be timely triggered to minimize unscheduled downtime. In Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 209-212, Jan. 2012, Sun et al., an approach to dynamically extract maintenance threshold is presented for maintenance scheduling, in which the reliability threshold for maintenance is determined by maximizing the expected availability and the reliability estimation is achieved by a modified two-stage degradation modeling approach. Although this approach is novel and useful, its reliability estimation is an asymptotic solution in long time scale. In this paper, we generalize the above result by considering a general degradation path model and provide the exact and explicit formulation for reliability estimation. Additionally, a maximum-likelihood estimation method for parameters in the presented model is proposed based on the historical degradation observations. Finally, an example is provided for illustration.