Failure-free life in reliability modeling

Abstract

The use of failure-free life in reliability analysis and modeling has often been overlooked. This is partly due to the lack of evidence from real life examples in which failure-free life could be a dominating factor in decision making. We give two motivations for using failure-free life in reliability modeling. Then, we present a real life case to illustrate the importance of including failure-free life in reliability analysis and product/process design and development. Methods for detecting and estimating failure-free life, beyond the current graphical method, are also presented. In particular, we provide two simple Excel™ spreadsheet templates for performing estimation. Numerical experience shows that the algorithms work well in practice.