ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of statistical estimation of remaining useful life. Several methods are considered, of which the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is the main tool for reliability estimations. Besides the MLE, the method of moments and a non-parametric approach are also applied. The link is always made with the time transformation g introduced in Chapter 5. The approaches are applied first to the special family of distributions described in Chapter 3 and then demonstrated in the more-general case with two engineering examples: (i) on lifetime analysis of degrading components, light-emitting diodes; and (ii) on lifetime analysis of a system, a fleet of four-component parallel systems.
