Variable importance assessment in lifespan models of insulation materials: A comparative study

This paper presents and compares different methods for evaluating the relative importance of variables involved in insulation lifespan models. Parametric and non-parametric models are derived from accelerated aging tests on twisted pairs covered with an insulating varnish under different stress constraints (voltage, frequency and temperature). Parametric models establish a simple stress-lifespan relationship and the variable importance can be evaluated from the estimated parameters. As an alternative approach, non-parametric models explain the stress-lifespan relationship by means of regression trees or random forests (RF) for instance. Regression trees naturally provide a hierarchy between the variables. However, they suffer from a high dependency with respect to the training set. This paper shows that RF provide a more robust model while allowing a quantitative variable importance assessment. Comparisons of the different models are performed on different training and test sets obtained through experiments.