Introduction to Reliability Analysis
Course Topics

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Role of reliability analysis in engineering (Groer and Leon)

Basics concept and terminology (Groer)

• Hazard rate
• Reliability function
• Cumulative distribution function
• Cumulative hazard function
• Bathtub curve

Failure times models and their motivation(Groer)

• Exponential
• Weibull and Gumbel
• Normal and lognormal
• Gamma
• Generalized Gamma

Fixed mission time reliability analysis (Groer)

• Military standard definition of reliability
• Binomial
• Hypergeometric
• Poisson

Simple methods for analyzing failure data (Leon)

• Method of moments
• Empirical reliability function
• Probability plotting for uncensored data
• Kaplan-Meier estimator for right censored data
• Probability plotting for right censored data
• Comparison of populations
• Simple competing risk model

Maximum likelihood estimation (Leon)

• Exponential
• Variance-Covariance matrix
• Numerical calculation of the MLE for the Weibull
• Delta Method for functions of the parameters
• Likelihood ration tests

Failure time models with covariates (Leon)

• Accelerated life models
• Life testing with temperature acceleration
• Life testing with voltage acceleration
• Diagnostic plots

Bayesian Methods (Groer)

• Basic concepts
• Exponential
• Conjugate priors
• Weibull
• Bayes factors
• Prediction ( Residual Life )

System reliability (Groer)

• Series systems
• Parallel systems
• k-out-n systems
• General Reliability block diagrams
• Approximate reliability calculations based on cut sets

Availability and Markov Models (Leon)

• Duplex system with two repair persons
• Duplex system with one repair person