Reliability analysis of mechatronic systems using censored data and Petri nets: Application on an antilock brake system (ABS)

Reliability estimation is becoming established as an important issue of the design process of mechatronic systems (i.e. systems involving in their implementation more basic technologies, such as mechanics, electronics and software). We propose to estimate the mechatronic system reliability using stochastic Petri Nets. The failure times are simulated in the Petri Nets model integrating the reliability of the components of the mechatronic system. The reliability is estimated from simulated failure times by using the Maximum Likelihood method. The paper is illustrated by an application example on ABS system. This paper presents the results of a co-operational work, getting together mechanical, electronic, and software engineers. The proposed method allows reliability evaluating both for n mechatronic systems and for their different sub-systems. An application to a vehicle Antilock Brake System (ABS) illustrates this method. We model the mechanical, electronic and embedded software sub-systems, to design, to check and to estimate the reliability of the ABS. Reliability evaluation of mechatronic systems requires the modeling of failure behavior of different components. We propose to evaluate mechatronic systems reliability using censored data. By using the failure times of the system, we compute the values of the parameters for all the components by maximum likelihood estimator with censored times.