This unique volume presents chapters written on the areas of life-testing and reliability by many well-known researchers who have contributed significantly to these two areas over the years. Chapters cover a wide range of topics such as inference under censoring and truncation, reliability growth models, designs to improve quality, prediction techniques, Bayesian analysis of reliability, multivariate methods, accelerated testing, and more. The book is written in an easy-to-follow style, first presenting the necessary theoretical details and then illustrating the methods with a numerical examples wherever possible. Many tables and graphs that are essential for the use of some of the new methodologies are presented throughout the volume. Numerous examples provide the reader with a clear understanding of the methods presented as well as with insight into the applications of these results.

This compact and easy-to-understand text presents the underlying principles and practice of reliability engineering and life testing. It describes the various techniques available for reliability analysis and prediction and explains the statistical methods necessary for reliability modelling, analysis and estimation. The text also discusses in detail the concepts of life testing, its classification and methodologies as well as accelerated life tests, the methodologies and models of stress related failure rates evaluation, and data analysis. Besides, it elaborates on the principles, methods and equipment of highly accelerated life testing and highly accelerated stress screening. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion on the parametric as well as non-parametric methods generally used for reliability estimation, and the recent developments in life testing of engineering components. Key Features The book is up-to-date and very much relevant to the present industrial, research, design, and development scenarios. Provides adequate tools to predict the system reliability at the design stage, to plan and conduct life testing on the products at various stages of development, and to use the life test and field data to estimate the product reliability. Gives sufficiently large number of worked-out examples. Primarily intended as a textbook for the postgraduate students of engineering (M.Tech., Reliability Engineering), the book would also be quite useful for reliability practitioners, professional engineers, and researchers.

This book is intended for students and practitioners who have had a calculus-based statistics course and who have an interest in safety considerations such as reliability, strength, and duration-of-load or service life. Many persons studying statistical science will be employed professionally where the problems encountered are obscure, what should be analyzed is not clear, the appropriate assumptions are equivocal, and data are scant. In this book there is no disclosure with many of the data sets what type of investigation should be made or what assumptions are to be used.

This volume presents recent research in reliability and quality theory and its applications by many leading experts in the field. The subjects covered include reliability optimization, software reliability, maintenance, quality engineering, system reliability, Monte Carlo simulation, tolerance design optimization, manufacturing system estimation, neural networks, software quality assessment, optimization design of life tests, software quality, reliability-centered maintenance, multivariate control chart, methodology for measurement of test effectiveness, imperfect preventive maintenance, Markovian reliability modeling, accelerated life testing, and system availability assessment. The book will serve as a reference for postgraduate students and will also prove useful for practitioners and researchers in reliability and quality engineering. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1.1: Introduction (88 KB). Chapter 1.2: The Symmetrical Johnson Su Distributions (101 KB). Chapter 1.3: Application to Control Charts (79 KB). Chapter 1.4: An Example (84 KB). Chapter 1.5: How Kurtosis Affects Classical Charts (104 KB). Chapter 1.6: OC and ARL Curves (133 KB). Chapter 1.7: Conlusions (129 KB). Contents: Control Charts for Data Having a Symmetrical Distribution with a Positive Kurtosis (P Philippe); A Software Reliability Model with Testing Coverage and Imperfect Debugging (X Zhang & H Pham); Cost Allocation for Software Reliability (O Berman & M Cutler); General Reliability Test Plans for One-Shot Devices (W Zhang & W-K Shiue); Multivariate Control Chart (M-W Lu & R J Rudy); Optimal Preparedness Maintenance of Multi-Unit Systems with Imperfect Maintenance and Economic Dependence (H Wang et al.); Estimation of System Reliability by Variationally Processed Monte Carlo Simulation (M Chang et al.); A Bayesian Approach to the Optimal Policy under Imperfect Preventive Maintenance Models (K-S Park & C-H Jun); Design of Life Tests Based on Multi-Stage Decision Process (A Kanagawa & H Ohta); Reliability-Centered Maintenance for Light Rail Equipment (K H K Leung et al.); Incorporating Environmental Concepts with Tolerance Design Optimization Model (G Chen); Markovian Reliability Modeling for Software Safety/Availability Measurement (K Tokuno & S Yamada); Group Control Charts with Variable Stream and Sample Sizes (K T Lee et al.); A Methodology for the Measurement of Test Effectiveness (J C Munson & A P Nikora); Modeling Software Quality with Classification Trees (T M Khoshgoftaar & E B Allen); Highly Reliable Systems: Designing Software for Improved Assessment (B Cukic & F Bastani); Manufacturing Systems Estimation Using Neural Network Models (P L Cooper & G J Savage); A Deterministic Selective Maintenance Model for Complex Systems (C R Cassady et al.). Readership: Practitioners, postgraduate students and researchers in reliability and quality engineering.

This volume presents recent research in reliability and quality theory and its applications by many leading experts in the field. The subjects covered include reliability optimization, software reliability, maintenance, quality engineering, system reliability, Monte Carlo simulation, tolerance design optimization, manufacturing system estimation, neural networks, software quality assessment, optimization design of life tests, software quality, reliability-centered maintenance, multivariate control chart, methodology for measurement of test effectiveness, imperfect preventive maintenance, Markovian reliability modeling, accelerated life testing, and system availability assessment. The book will serve as a reference for postgraduate students and will also prove useful for practitioners and researchers in reliability and quality engineering.

Includes the binomial tests of comparison and information on Accept-Reject Tests, the Sequential Probability Ratio Test, Bayesian MTBF and Reliability Demonstration Tests, as well as other important accelerated tests such as Arrhenius, Eyriing, Bazovsky, and Inverse Power Law.

Recent Advances in System Reliability discusses developments in modern reliability theory such as signatures, multi-state systems and statistical inference. It describes the latest achievements in these fields, and covers the application of these achievements to reliability engineering practice. The chapters cover a wide range of new theoretical subjects and have been written by leading experts in reliability theory and its applications. The topics include: concepts and different definitions of signatures (D-spectra), their properties and applications to reliability of coherent systems and network-type structures; Lz-transform of Markov stochastic process and its application to multi-state system reliability analysis; methods for cost-reliability and cost-availability analysis of multi-state systems; optimal replacement and protection strategy; and statistical inference. Recent Advances in System Reliability presents many examples to illustrate the theoretical results. Real world multi-state systems, such as power generation and transmission, refrigeration, and production systems, are considered in the form of case studies, making the book a useful resource for researchers and postgraduate students.