Maximum Likelihood Estimation and the Multivariate Bernoulli Distribution: An Application to Reliability

Paul H. Kvam
Additional contact information
Paul H. Kvam: Los Alamos National Laboratory

A chapter in Lifetime Data: Models in Reliability and Survival Analysis, 1996, pp 187-194 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract We investigate systems designed using redundant component configurations. If external events exist in the working environment that cause two or more components in the system to fail within the same demand period, the designed redundancy in the system can be quickly nullified. In the engineering field, such events are called common cause failures (CCFs), and are primary factors in some risk assessments. If CCFs have positive probability, but are not addressed in the analysis, the assessment may contain a gross over-estimation of the system reliability. We apply a discrete, multivariate shock model for a parallel system of two or more components, allowing for positive probability that such external events can occur. The methods derived are motivated by attribute data for emergency diesel generators from various U. S. nuclear power plants. Closed form solutions for maximum likelihood estimators exist in some cases; statistical tests and confidence intervals are discussed for the different test environments considered.

Keywords: Nuclear Power Plant; Failure Probability; American Statistical Association; Asymptotic Variance; Compete Risk Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4757-5654-8_25

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781475756548

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4757-5654-8_25

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().