A mechanical system reliability degradation analysis and remaining life estimation method——With the example of an aircraft hatch lock mechanism

The failure mechanism and degradation analysis of an aircraft cabin door lock mechanism are studied. A data-driven degradation analysis is conducted based on the characteristics of two types of degradation data for the lock mechanism. The degradation process of the fluctuating elevation is described by Wiener process, and the lifetime is described using the Inverse Gauss (IG) process. The correlation between the two degradation processes is studied, and the correlation analysis is carried out with four copula functions. Moreover, the optimal model is obtained for reliability analysis using three model selection methods and Bayesian inference based on the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for parameter estimation. Finally, a residual life prediction model is proposed, and the accuracy of the model is tested with the error. The results show that the RUL prediction accuracy can be accepted, which helps to improve the reliability and service life of a type of aircraft lock mechanism.