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Designing a degradation experiment
Author(s) -
Yu HongFwu,
Tseng ShengTsaing
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
naval research logistics (nrl)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1520-6750
pISSN - 0894-069X
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6750(199909)46:6<689::aid-nav6>3.0.co;2-n
Subject(s) - reliability engineering , computer science , robustness (evolution) , percentile , reliability (semiconductor) , variance (accounting) , degradation (telecommunications) , product (mathematics) , design of experiments , sample size determination , operations research , mathematical optimization , statistics , mathematics , engineering , power (physics) , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , accounting , geometry , quantum mechanics , business , gene , telecommunications
Degradation experiments are widely used to assess the reliability of highly reliable products which are not likely to fail under the traditional life tests. In order to conduct a degradation experiment efficiently, several factors, such as the inspection frequency, the sample size, and the termination time, need to be considered carefully. These factors not only affect the experimental cost, but also affect the precision of the estimate of a product's lifetime. In this paper, we deal with the optimal design of a degradation experiment. Under the constraint that the total experimental cost does not exceed a predetermined budget, the optimal decision variables are solved by minimizing the variance of the estimated 100 p th percentile of the lifetime distribution of the product. An example is provided to illustrate the proposed method. Finally, a simulation study is conducted to investigate the robustness of this proposed method. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 46: 689–706, 1999