ON FAILURE MODELING

A promising approach to failure modeling, in particular to developing failure-time distributions, is discussed. Under this approach, system state or wear and tear is modeled by an appropriately chosen random process - for example, a diffusion process - and the occurrences of fatal shocks are modeled by a Poisson process whose rate function is state dependent. The system is said to fail when either wear and tear accumulates beyond an acceptable or safe level or a fatal shock occurs. Reasonable postulates for the dynamics of failure should lend credence to the prediction and estimation of reliability, maintainability, and availability.