Mean Residual Life: Theory and Applications

Abstract

In the last two decades, reliabilists, statisticians, and others have shown intensified interest in the mean residual life (MRL) and derived many useful results concerning it. Given that a unit is of age t, the remaining life after time t is random. The expected value of this random residual life is called the mean residual life at time t. Since the MRL is defined for each time t, we also speak of the MRL function. THe MRL function is like the density function the moment generating function, or the characteristic function: for a distribution with a finite mean, the MRL completely determines the distribution via an inversion formula. Not only is the MRL used for parametric modeling but also f or nonparametric modeling. Large non-parametric classes of life distributions such as decreasing mean residual life (DMRL) and new better than used in expectation (NBUE) have been defined using MRL. This paper defines the MRL function formally and survey some of the key theory. Its wide range of applications is also discussed. Additional keywords: Reliability; Failure rate. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1985
Accession Number
ADA158589

Entities

People

  • Frank Guess
  • Frank Proschan

Organizations

  • Florida State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Biological Sciences
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Science
  • Information Science
  • Markov Chains
  • Markov Processes
  • New York
  • Quality Control
  • Reliability
  • Residuals
  • Rodents
  • Security
  • Social Sciences
  • Statistics
  • Stochastic Processes
  • Surveys

Readers

  • Combustion Dynamics and Shock Wave Physics.
  • Statistical inference.