Belief reliability:a scientific exploration of reliability engineering

This paper systematically introduces and reviews a scientific exploration of reliability called the belief reliability.Beginning with the origin of reliability engineering,the problems of present theories for reliability engineering are summarized as a query,a dilemma,and a puzzle.Then,through philosophical reflection,we introduce the theoretical solutions given by belief reliability theory,including scientific principles,basic equations,reliability science experiments,and mathematical measures.The basic methods and technologies of belief reliability,namely,belief reliability analysis,function-oriented belief reliability design,belief reliability evaluation,and several newly developed methods and technologies are sequentially elaborated and overviewed.Based on the above investigations,we summarize the significance of belief reliability theory and make some prospects about future research,aiming to promote the development of reliability science and engineering.

Graduation formula: a new method to construct belief reliability distribution under epistemic uncertainty

In reliability engineering,the observations of the variables of interest are always limited due to cost or schedule constraints.Consequently,the epistemic uncertainty,which derives from lack of knowledge and information,plays a vital influence on the reliability evaluation.Belief reliability is a new reliability metric that takes the impact of epistemic uncertainty into consideration and belief reliability distribution is fundamental to belief reliability application.This paper develops a new method called graduation formula to construct belief reliability distribution with limited observations.The developed method constructs the belief reliability distribution by determining the corresponding belief degrees of the observations.An algorithm is designed for the graduation formula as it is a set of transcendental equations,which is difficult to determine the analytical solution.The developed method and the proposed algorithm are illustrated by two numerical examples to show their efficiency and future application.

Belief reliability modeling and analysis for planetary reducer considering multi-source uncertainties and wear

The planetary reducer is a common type of transmission mechanism,which can provide high transmission accuracy and has been widely used,and it is usually required with high reliability of transmission characteristics in practice.During the manufacturing and usage stages of planetary reducers,uncertainties are ubiquitous and wear is inevitable,which affect the transmission characteristics and the reliability of planetary reducers.In this paper,belief reliability modeling and analysis considering multi-uncertainties and wear are proposed for planetary reducers.Firstly,based on the functional principle and the influence of wear,the performance margin degradation model is established using the hysteresis error as the key performance parameter,where the degradation is mainly caused by the accumulated wear.After that,multi-source uncertainties are analyzed and quantified separately,including manufacturing errors,uncertainties in operational and environmental conditions,and uncertainties in performance thresholds.Finally,the belief reliability model is established based on the performance margin degradation model.A case study of a planetary reducer is applied and the reliability sensitivity analysis is implemented to show the practicability of the proposed method.The results show that the proposed method can provide some suggestions to the design and manufacturing phases of the planetary reducer.

Measuring reliability under epistemic uncertainty:Review on non-probabilistic reliability metrics

In this paper, a systematic review of non-probabilistic reliability metrics is conducted to assist the selection of appropriate reliability metrics to model the influence of epistemic uncertainty. Five frequently used non-probabilistic reliability metrics are critically reviewed, i.e., evidence- theory-based reliability metrics, interval-analysis-based reliability metrics, fuzzy-interval-analysis- based reliability metrics, possibility-theory-based reliability metrics （posbist reliability） and uncertainty-theory-based reliability metrics （belief reliability）. It is pointed out that a qualified reli- ability metric that is able to consider the effect of epistemic uncertainty needs to （ 1 ） compensate the conservatism in the estimations of the component-level reliability metrics caused by epistemic uncertainty, and （2） satisfy the duality axiom, otherwise it might lead to paradoxical and confusing results in engineering applications. The five commonly used non-probabilistic reliability metrics are compared in terms of these two properties, and the comparison can serve as a basis for the selection of the appropriate reliability metrics.

A new structural reliability index based on uncertainty theory

The classical probabilistic reliability theory and fuzzy reliability theory cannot directly measure the uncertainty of structural reliability with uncertain variables, i.e., subjective random and fuzzy variables. In order to simultaneously satisfy the duality of randomness and subadditivity of fuzziness in the reliability problem, a new quantification method for the reliability of structures is presented based on uncertainty theory, and an uncertainty-theory-based perspective of classical Cornell reliability index is explored. In this paper, by introducing the uncertainty theory, we adopt the uncertain measure to quantify the reliability of structures for the subjective probability or fuzzy variables, instead of probabilistic and possibilistic measures. We utilize uncertain variables to uniformly represent the subjective random and fuzzy parameters, based on which we derive solutions to analyze the uncertainty reliability of structures with uncertainty distributions. Moreover, we propose the Cornell uncertainty reliability index based on the uncertain expected value and variance.Experimental results on three numerical applications demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.