A Bayesian approach for sealing failure analysis considering the non-competing relationship of multiple degradation processes

Degradation analysis is an effective method for reliability analysis when failure time data is rare or hard to observe. Multiple degradation analysis with competing risk model is often used to implement the degradation analysis. However, in reality, the failure of a system is often a result of a combination of multiple degradation processes, such as the sum of multiple degradations. To handle this non-competing relationship of multiple degradation processes, this paper presents a new reliability model for multiple degradation processes analysis. The proposed model is demonstrated through a case-study of a spool valve. In this paper, the gamma process is adopted to construct the reliability model. The Bayesian method is used to obtain the estimations of model parameters and reliability indexes by taking account of uncertainty. The results can then be further used as valuable information for further degradation analysis and decision-making considering uncertainty.