Reliability Assessment of Numerical Control Machine Tools Using Weibull Mixture Models

Abstract

Weibull distribution is one of the most widely used model in reliability analysis of NC machine tools. In order to assess the reliability of NC machine tool, Generalized Expectation Maximization (GEM) algorithm is used to estimate parameters of mixture Weibull models. Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC) are used as comprehensive criteria to select the number of subpopulations of mixture models. The results show that mixture models are more suitable to assess reliability of NC machine tools than that of single model. Root mean square errors (RMSE) of mixture models reduce by 87.5% than that of single model. Reliability evaluation results of machine tool, such as MTBF etc., are given.