AN ENGINEERING BASIS FOR STATISTICAL LIFETIME MODELS WITH AN APPLICATION TO TRIBOLOGY

We propose a method for incorporating engineering information about fa ilure mechanisms into a statistical lifetime model, The central idea i s that wear, stress, and strain are more directly related to failure t han is component age, With an application to tribology, we use the met hod to derive a lifetime model which explicitly uses information about wear, The model is contrasted with the more common technique of fitti ng the parameters of a statistical distribution, A primary benefit of an engineering-based model is its interpretability for connecting life time data for similar components wed under differing operating conditi ons, such as during accelerated lifetime testing.