Accelerated Lifetime Data Analysis with a Nonconstant Shape Parameter

Abstract

Accelerated life test is commonly used for the estimation of high-reliability product. In this paper, we present a simple and efficient approach to estimate the coefficients of acceleration models. Assuming that both scale and shape parameters of Weibull lifetime distribution vary with stress factors, we estimate the parameters of Weibull distribution using maximum likelihood method and reduce the bias of shape parameter estimator. Considering the heteroscedasticity, we compute the estimates of the coefficients of acceleration models through weighted least square method. Additionally, we obtain the confidence interval of low percentile via bootstrapping. We compare the proposed method with other methods using a real lifetime example. Finally, we study the performance of the proposed method by simulation. The simulation results show that our proposed method is effective.