Statistical inference for a competing failure model based on the Wiener process and Weibull distribution.

Competing failure models with degradation phenomena and sudden failures are becoming more and more common and important in practice. In this study, the generalized pivotal quantity method was proposed to investigate the modeling of competing failure problems involving both degradation and sudden failures. In the competing failure model, the degradation failure was modeled through a Wiener process and the sudden failure was described as a Weibull distribution. For point estimation, the maximum likelihood estimations of parameters $ \mu $ and $ \sigma^2 $ were provided and the inverse estimation of parameters $ \eta $ and $ \beta $ were derived. The exact confidence intervals for parameters $ \mu $, $ \sigma^2 $, and $ \beta $ were obtained. Furthermore, the generalized confidence interval of parameter $ \eta $ was obtained through constructing the generalized pivotal quantity. Using the substitution principle, the generalized confidence intervals for the reliability function, the $ p $th percentile of lifetime, and the mean time to failure were also obtained. Simulation technique was carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed generalized confidence intervals. The simulation results showed that the proposed generalized confidence interval was effective in terms of coverage percentage. Finally, an example was presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method.