Abstract
Due to advancements in technology and manufacturing capability, it is not uncommon that life tests yield no or few failures at low stress levels. In these situations it is difficult to analyse lifetime data and make meaningful inferences about product or system reliability. For some products or systems whose performance characteristics degrade over time, a failure is said to have occurred when a performance characteristic crosses a critical threshold. The measurements of the degradation characteristic contain much useful and credible information about product or system reliability. Degradation measurements of the performance characteristics of an unfailed unit at different times can directly relate reliability measures to physical characteristics. Reliability prediction based on physical performance measures can be an efficient and alternative method to estimate for some highly reliable parts or systems. If the degradation process and the distance between the last measurement and a specified threshold can be established, the remaining useful life is predicted in advance. In turn, this prediction leads to just in time maintenance decision to protect systems. In this paper, we describe techniques for mapping product or system which has degrading performance parameter to the associated classical reliability measures in the performance domain. This paper described a general modeling and analysis procedure for reliability prediction based on one dominant degradation performance characteristic considering pseudo degradation performance life trend model. This pseudo degradation trend model is based on probability modeling of a failure mechanism degradation trend and comparison of a projected distribution to pre-defined critical soft failure point in time or cycle.
