Degradation-Based Reliability Modeling of Complex Systems in Dynamic Environments

Abstract

Benefiting from the intimate link and the sufficient information conveyed by the degradation-threshold failure mechanism, degradation analysis has gradually become a hot topic in reliability engineering, which has been investigated extensively in the recent two decades. Various degradation models have been introduced to facilitate the reliability modeling and assessment of modern products, especially for highly reliable products. As the continual evolving of these models, there is a growing trend of investigation of reliability modeling and assessment based on degradation analysis. However, modern complex systems are characterized as multi-functional and subject to dynamic environments. Two aspects are indispensable for the investigation of degradation based reliability modeling and assessment of modern complex systems: (1) how to deal with complex systems with more than one degradation indicators, and (2) how to incorporate the effects of dynamic environments. To advance the research on degradation modeling and analysis of complex systems, this paper presents a summary of the state of the arts on the research of reliability modeling of complex systems by taking account of these two aspects. In this paper, the review is delivered in two progressive stages: multiple degradation processes under static environments, and multiple degradation processes under dynamic environments. Some discussion on further research topics from both theoretical and practical perspectives are presented to conclude the paper.