Detecting degradation of components during reliability-evaluation studies

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that determines the reliability of a component in a system. During operation, the system monitors inferential variables associated with a number of specimens of the component. The system then collects degradation data by first computing a likelihood value that indicates whether an inferential variable associated with a specimen of the component is behaving normally or abnormally. Next, the system determines whether the specimen of the component has degraded based on the likelihood value. If the specimen of the component is determined to have degraded, the system records the time when the specimen of the component was determined to have degraded. The system also uses the degradation data to determine the reliability of the component in the system.