An information fusion reliability allocation method considering limited sample size circumstances

As an essential part in product reliability design procedure, reliability allocation can connect the reliability index between the overall product and its multiple subsystems. To obtain a reasonable reliability allocation scheme, especially for limited sample size circumstances commonly encountered in aeronautic and astronautic fields, an information fusion allocation method is constructed in the current study. Grey relational analysis (GRA) is incorporated to analyze objective data, while analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is introduced to implement subjective data analysis. Then a final allocation scheme is derived by fusion of the binary information sources. A real application regarding an aeronautic product reliability allocation is given. The sensitivity of allocation result to limited life information circumstances and comparative analysis with reference methods are implemented to demonstrate the reasonability and effectiveness.