The Analysis of Weibull Lifetime Data Subject to Imperfect Repair

A repairable system with two types of failures is studied. Type I failure (minor failure) is removed by a minimal repair, whereas type II failure (catastrophic failure) is modified by an unplanned replacement. The first failure of the system follows a Weibull probability distribution and two maintenance policies are considered. In the first policy, the system is replaced at time T or the first type II failure, and in the second policy, the system is replaced at the nth type I failure, the first type II failure or at time T, whichever takes place first. This paper aims to derive a general representation for the likelihood function of the proposed models. The likelihood-ratio test statistic, maximum likelihood estimators and asymptotic confidence intervals for the parameters are also found. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation is conducted to illustrate the results.