Designing a degradation experiment

Degradation experiments are widely used to assess the reliability of highly reliable products which are not likely to fail under the traditional life tests. In order to conduct a degradation experiment efficiently, several factors, such as the inspection frequency, the sample size, and the termination time, need to be considered carefully. These factors not only affect the experimental cost, but also affect the precision of the estimate of a product's lifetime. In this paper, we deal with the optimal design of a degradation experiment. Under the constraint that the total experimental cost does not exceed a predetermined budget, the optimal decision variables are solved by minimizing the variance of the estimated 100pth percentile of the lifetime distribution of the product. An example is provided to illustrate the proposed method. Finally, a simulation study is conducted to investigate the robustness of this proposed method. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 46: 689–706, 1999     

2(1/2)谱在直升机声信号特征提取中的应用

介绍了四阶累积量对角切片的一种定义,分析了其傅里叶变换(212谱)在提取三次相位耦合特征方面的良好性能及其估计方法;将其应用于具有三次相位耦合的直升机声信号特征提取。仿真结果表明,利用该方法能够分析信号的三次相位耦合信息,且具有计算方法简单、运算速度快及良好的抑制高斯噪声的优点。实际的数据处理结果验证了该方法的有效性。     

A general model for accelerated life testing with time‐dependent covariates

This paper introduces a general or “distribution‐free” model to analyze the lifetime of components under accelerated life testing. Unlike the accelerated failure time (AFT) models, the proposed model shares the advantage of being “distribution‐free” with the proportional hazard (PH) model and overcomes the deficiency of the PH model not allowing survival curves corresponding to different values of a covariate to cross. In this research, we extend and modify the extended hazard regression (EHR) model using the partial likelihood function to analyze failure data with time‐dependent covariates. The new model can be easily adopted to create an accelerated life testing model with different types of stress loading. For example, stress loading in accelerated life testing can be a step function, cyclic, or linear function with time. These types of stress loadings reduce the testing time and increase the number of failures of components under test. The proposed EHR model with time‐dependent covariates which incorporates multiple stress loadings requires further verification. Therefore, we conduct an accelerated life test in the laboratory by subjecting components to time‐dependent stresses, and we compare the reliability estimation based on the developed model with that obtained from experimental results. The combination of the theoretical development of the accelerated life testing model verified by laboratory experiments offers a unique perspective to reliability model building and verification. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 46: 303–321, 1999     

Pairwise model discrimination with applications in lifetime distributions and degradation processes

Reliability data obtained from life tests and degradation tests have been extensively used for purposes such as estimating product reliability and predicting warranty costs. When there is more than one candidate model, an important task is to discriminate between the models. In the literature, the model discrimination was often treated as a hypothesis test and a pairwise model discrimination procedure was carried out. Because the null distribution of the test statistic is unavailable in most cases, the large sample approximation and the bootstrap were frequently used to find the acceptance region of the test. Although these two methods are asymptotically accurate, their performance in terms of size and power is not satisfactory in small sample size. To enhance the small‐sample performance, we propose a new method to approximate the null distribution, which builds on the idea of generalized pivots. Conventionally, the generalized pivots were often used for interval estimation of a certain parameter or function of parameters in presence of nuisance parameters. In this study, we further extend the idea of generalized pivots to find the acceptance region of the model discrimination test. Through extensive simulations, we show that the proposed method performs better than the existing methods in discriminating between two lifetime distributions or two degradation models over a wide range of sample sizes. Two real examples are used to illustrate the proposed methods.     

认知域的公域特性及其关键技术

伴随着“认知域”作战概念被引入军事领域,现代战场已经形成了物理域、信息域、认知域三大作战维度。认知域已经成为美国战略空间拓展的主要战场之一。按照习主席关于要打好意识形态领域“制脑权”战争的思想,更需要重视认知域的攻防,研究相关技术,才能在没有硝烟的战场上不落下风。     

A O(nm log(U/n)) time maximum flow algorithm

In this paper, we present an O(nm log(U/n)) time maximum flow algorithm. If U = O(n) then this algorithm runs in O(nm) time for all values of m and n. This gives the best available running time to solve maximum flow problems satisfying U = O(n). Furthermore, for unit capacity networks the algorithm runs in O(n^2/3m) time. It is a two‐phase capacity scaling algorithm that is easy to implement and does not use complex data structures. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 511–520, 2000     

Minimizing makespan on a single batch processing machine with nonidentical job sizes

We deal with the problem of minimizing makespan on a single batch processing machine. In this problem, each job has both processing time and size (capacity requirement). The batch processing machine can process a number of jobs simultaneously as long as the total size of these jobs being processed does not exceed the machine capacity. The processing time of a batch is just the processing time of the longest job in the batch. An approximation algorithm with worst‐case ratio 3/2 is given for the version where the processing times of large jobs (with sizes greater than 1/2) are not less than those of small jobs (with sizes not greater than 1/2). This result is the best possible unless P = NP. For the general case, we propose an approximation algorithm with worst‐case ratio 7/4. A number of heuristics by Uzosy are also analyzed and compared. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48: 226–240, 2001     

Analysis of a new vehicle scheduling and location problem

We consider a container terminal discharging containers from a ship and locating them in the terminal yard. Each container has a number of potential locations in the yard where it can be stored. Containers are moved from the ship to the yard using a fleet of vehicles, each of which can carry one container at a time. The problem is to assign each container to a yard location and dispatch vehicles to the containers so as to minimize the time it takes to download all the containers from the ship. We show that the problem is NP‐hard and develop a heuristic algorithm based on formulating the problem as an assignment problem. The effectiveness of the heuristic is analyzed from both worst‐case and computational points of view. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48: 363–385, 2001     

Optimal control of a production‐inventory system with both backorders and lost sales

We consider the optimal control of a production inventory‐system with a single product and two customer classes where items are produced one unit at a time. Upon arrival, customer orders can be fulfilled from existing inventory, if there is any, backordered, or rejected. The two classes are differentiated by their backorder and lost sales costs. At each decision epoch, we must determine whether or not to produce an item and if so, whether to use this item to increase inventory or to reduce backlog. At each decision epoch, we must also determine whether or not to satisfy demand from a particular class (should one arise), backorder it, or reject it. In doing so, we must balance inventory holding costs against the costs of backordering and lost sales. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process and use it to characterize the structure of the optimal policy. We show that the optimal policy can be described by three state‐dependent thresholds: a production base‐stock level and two order‐admission levels, one for each class. The production base‐stock level determines when production takes place and how to allocate items that are produced. This base‐stock level also determines when orders from the class with the lower shortage costs (Class 2) are backordered and not fulfilled from inventory. The order‐admission levels determine when orders should be rejected. We show that the threshold levels are monotonic (either nonincreasing or nondecreasing) in the backorder level of Class 2. We also characterize analytically the sensitivity of these thresholds to the various cost parameters. Using numerical results, we compare the performance of the optimal policy against several heuristics and show that those that do not allow for the possibility of both backordering and rejecting orders can perform poorly.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2010     

Fully sequential procedures for comparing constrained systems via simulation

We consider the problem of finding the system with the best primary performance measure among a finite number of simulated systems in the presence of a stochastic constraint on a single real‐valued secondary performance measure. Solving this problem requires the identification and removal from consideration of infeasible systems (Phase I) and of systems whose primary performance measure is dominated by that of other feasible systems (Phase II). We use indifference zones in both phases and consider two approaches, namely, carrying out Phases I and II sequentially and carrying out Phases I and II simultaneously, and we provide specific example procedures of each type. We present theoretical results guaranteeing that our approaches (general and specific, sequential and simultaneous) yield the best system with at least a prespecified probability, and we provide a portion of an extensive numerical study aimed at evaluating and comparing the performance of our approaches. The experimental results show that both new procedures are useful for constrained ranking and selection, with neither procedure showing uniform superiority over the other.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010