SYSTEM RELIABILITY PREDICTION USING DATA FROM NONIDENTICAL ENVIRONMENTS

Since information changes one's mind and probability assessments refle ct one's degree of beliefs, a reliability prediction model should encl ose all relevant information. Almost always ignored in existing reliab ility models is the dependence on component life lengths, induced by a common but unknown environment. Furthermore, existing models seldom p ermit learning from components' performance in similar systems, under the knowledge of non-identical operating environments. In an earlier p aper by the present authors the first type of aspects were taken into account and in this paper that model is generalised so that failure da ta generated from several similar systems in non-identical environment s may be used for the prediction of any similar system in its specific environment. (C) 1998. Published by Elsevier Science Limited.