TY - GEN
T1 - Dependence Modeling for Multivariate System Reliability Prediction
AU - Pan, Rong
AU - Fang, Guanqi
AU - Wang, Wendai
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Both the reliability-wise system structure and the multivariate component lifetime distributions are required for accurately predicting a complex system's reliability. Most of existing research work either assumes these components' lifetime distributions are statistically independent or they are subject to a well-defined multivariate joint distribution, such as a multivariate Gaussian distribution. However, oftentimes the independence assumption does not match engineering practice since components usually have interactions with each other due to common manufacturing defects and shared environmental conditions, etc. On the other hand, a multivariate joint Gaussian distribution may not be adequate, because it cannot describe distribution skewness or upper/lower tail dependency among multivariate lifetime data that are often observed in real data sets. As a result, the system reliability assessment may be biased.In this study, we present a data-centric multivariate distribution construction framework that is based on a sequence of copula functions. Under this framework, historical degradation data from different components within a system are utilized to derive the multivariate degradation model, and various types of dependency among these components are explicitly scrutinized and used for either component or system level performance prediction. Our contributions include that 1) we apply the pair copula construction (PCC) method on more than two degradation processes to explicitly model the association of these processes; 2) we connect the system structure and system failure prior information to the PCC structure to simplify the construction of multivariate distribution; and 3) we demonstrate the biasness in system reliability prediction if the dependencies existed in component failure processes are ignored. This study highlights the applicability and flexibility of the pair copula construction method for conducting multivariate reliability analysis for complex systems. A case study of degradation analysis of optical materials is used to demonstrate our proposed approach.
AB - Both the reliability-wise system structure and the multivariate component lifetime distributions are required for accurately predicting a complex system's reliability. Most of existing research work either assumes these components' lifetime distributions are statistically independent or they are subject to a well-defined multivariate joint distribution, such as a multivariate Gaussian distribution. However, oftentimes the independence assumption does not match engineering practice since components usually have interactions with each other due to common manufacturing defects and shared environmental conditions, etc. On the other hand, a multivariate joint Gaussian distribution may not be adequate, because it cannot describe distribution skewness or upper/lower tail dependency among multivariate lifetime data that are often observed in real data sets. As a result, the system reliability assessment may be biased.In this study, we present a data-centric multivariate distribution construction framework that is based on a sequence of copula functions. Under this framework, historical degradation data from different components within a system are utilized to derive the multivariate degradation model, and various types of dependency among these components are explicitly scrutinized and used for either component or system level performance prediction. Our contributions include that 1) we apply the pair copula construction (PCC) method on more than two degradation processes to explicitly model the association of these processes; 2) we connect the system structure and system failure prior information to the PCC structure to simplify the construction of multivariate distribution; and 3) we demonstrate the biasness in system reliability prediction if the dependencies existed in component failure processes are ignored. This study highlights the applicability and flexibility of the pair copula construction method for conducting multivariate reliability analysis for complex systems. A case study of degradation analysis of optical materials is used to demonstrate our proposed approach.
KW - copula function
KW - degradation
KW - multivariate distribution
KW - system reliability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123044283&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85123044283&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/RAMS48097.2021.9605735
DO - 10.1109/RAMS48097.2021.9605735
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85123044283
T3 - Proceedings - Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium
BT - 67th Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, RAMS 2021
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 67th Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, RAMS 2021
Y2 - 24 May 2021 through 27 May 2021
ER -