Reliability assessment of gamma deteriorating system based on bayesian updating

Degradation data can provide with useful information about the reliability assessment for highly reliable products. In this paper, a method based on performance degradation data is proposed to assess reliability of high reliable long life time products. The degradation process can be described as a gamma process, and then reliability can be assessed based on analysis on failure physical mechanism. In order to adjust the degradation modeling according to the actual inspection results, a Bayesian updating method to improve the lifetime distribution is also proposed. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method. The results presented in the case study show that the updating model can describe the degradation characteristics more accurate than the original one.