In order to evaluate the reliability of long-lifetime products with degradation data, a new proportional hazard degradation model is proposed. By the similarity between time-degradation data and stress-accelerated lifetime, and the failure rate function of degradation data which is assumed to be proportional to the time covariate, the reliability assessment based on a proportional hazard degradation model is realized. The least squares method is used to estimate the model＇s parameters. Based on the failure rate of the degradation data and the proportion function of the known time, the failure rate and the reliability function under the given time and the predetermined failure threshold can be extrapolated. A long life GaAs laser is selected as a case study and its reliability is evaluated. The results show that the proposed method can accurately describe the degradation process and it is effective for the reliability assessment of long lifetime products.
Considering the dependence and competitive relation-ship between traumatic failure and degradation,the reliability assessment of products based on competing failure analysis is studied.The hazard rate of traumatic failure is regarded as a Weibull distribution of the degradation performance,and the Wiener process is used to describe the degradation process.The parameters are estimated with the maximum likelihood estimation（MLE）method.A reliability model based on competing failure analysis is proposed.A case study of the GaAs lasers is given to validate the effectiveness of the model and its solving method.The results indicate that if only the degradation failure is considered,the estimated result will be comparably optimistic.Meanwhile,the correlation between the degradation and traumatic failure has a great influence on the accuracy of reliability assessment.
