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A reliability model for planning in-service inspections for components subject to degradation failure. (English) Zbl 0830.62087

Summary: This paper develops a probabilistic model for the reliability of components with life-extending in-service nondestructive inspections. Unit-to-unit variability in reliability with no inspections is described by a random effects model with several parameters considered random, e.g., parameters defining the initial level of degradation, the observed level of degradation at inspections, and the degradation law parameters. In-service inspections are scheduled to control the hazard function or other functions of the failure time density.
Besides the time to failure density and the hazard function, we provide expressions for reliability figures of merit like the approximate cost per unit of service time. In-service inspections are scheduled dynamically on the basis of the Bayesian updating of the failure time density in order to meet specific reliability or costs criteria. Several important models are derived as special cases of the main model.

MSC:

62N05 Reliability and life testing
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