Reliability Analysis of Repairable Systems Based on a Two-Segment Bathtub-Shaped Failure Intensity Function

Abstract

The reliability analysis of complex repairable systems is an important but computationally intensive task that requires fitting the failure data of whole life cycles well. Because the existing reliability models are mainly based on the assumptions that systems are either unrepairable or will go through an “as good as new” type of repair which does not describe actual situations effectively and precisely, a two-segment failure intensity model based on sectional non-homogeneous Poisson process is developed. This model is capable of analyzing repairable systems with bathtub-shaped failure intensity. It considers minimal maintenance activities and preserves the time series of failures based on the whole life cycle. The advantages of this model lie in its flexibility to describe monotonic, non-monotonic failure intensities and its practicality to determine the burn-in or replacement time for repairable systems. Three real lifetime failure data sets are applied to illustrate the developed model. The results show that the model performs well regarding the Akaike information criterion value, mean squared errors, and Cramer–von Mises values.