Abstract:

A Bayesian reliability assessment method for a rocket ejection seat is proposed which combines the reliability information of the whole seat with its subsystems. First, the inheritance factor is determined with square goodness of fit; then the mixed Beta distribution is built; finally, the posterior distribution is used to assess system reliability. With this new method, the reliability of a rocket ejection seat is evaluated to reach 0.924 under the confidence level 0.90. The result shows that it is more rational with this new method than with classical statistical method and it is feasible to use the new method to evaluate the reliability of a rocket ejection seat.

Key words: rocket ejection seat, reliability, mixed Beta distribution, inheritance factor, posterior distribution