On-line Survival Analysis of Power Electronic Converters Using Step Noise-Cox Processes

Abstract: This paper is focused on survival analysis of electrical components. The main goal of this paper is to develop a method for on-line estimation of the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of electrical components under dynamic stress levels. The proposed method models the variations of the stress levels as a stochastic process. Hence, a stochastic failure rate function can be developed for each electrical component. Later, this function is used as the underlying rate of a doubly stochastic Poisson process (known as Cox processes). Furthermore, this Cox process is used for on-line estimation of the Mean Residual Life (MRL) using the observed stress levels. The proposed method provides a good estimate of the age and life expectancy of each component. An experimental case study is provided to demonstrate the proposed method.