Reliability estimations of components from masked system life data

Abstract

This paper introduces estimations of reliability values for the individual components in a series system using masked system life data. In particular, we compute the maximum likelihood and Bayes estimates of component reliabilities when the system components have constant failure rates. In obtaining Bayes estimates, it is assumed that the component reliabilities are independent random variables having piecewise linear prior distributions. The model is illustrated for a two-component series. A numerical simulation study is presented to show how one can utilize the present approach to compute estimations of component reliabilities for a practical problem. Further, we investigate the comparison between the maximum likelihood and Bayes estimates, based on the respective percentage errors.