Track 1 Session 6

10:20 to 11:20 a.m. Thursday, October 21, 2010

How to Model the Bathtub Curve with the Weibull Distribution

The Weibull distribution is widely used in reliability engineering. However, the basic Weibull distribution with two parameters is still not flexible enough as it is unable to model the so-called bathtub curve that we usually talk about. In this talk, we will discuss different ways to model the bathtub curve. It is recommended that a Weibull plot could be used to select suitable models for the data set concerned. Approaches for the estimation of model parameters based on the Weibull plot will also be discussed.

Key Words: Bathtub Curve, Weibull Distribution, Plots

X. Min

National University of Singapore