On the upper truncated Weibull distribution and its reliability implications

The characteristics and application of the truncated Weibull distribution are studied in this paper. This distribution is applicable to the situation where the test data are bounded in an interval because of test conditions, cost and other restrictions. An important property of the truncated Weibull distribution is that it can have bathtub-shaped failure rate function. In this paper, the parametric analysis and parameter estimation methods of the distribution are investigated. Both the graphical approach and the maximum likelihood estimation are considered. The applicability of this distribution to modeling lifetime data is illustrated by an example and the results of comparisons to other competitive models in modeling the given data are also presented. Moreover, the possible application of the distribution to modeling component or system failure is discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.