Experimental methods in reliability measurement

Abstract

This tutorial will provide an overview of some problems and the state of the art on experimental methods in reliability measurement. Comparisons between the experiment and the real will be followed by identifying measurements possible only through experiments. A few key experimental techniques will be introduced, followed by case studies for illustration. A technique useful to drive an experiment towards making certain empirical lower/upper bound measurements will be discussed. Such results are particularly useful for modeling and analysis. This will be followed by examples of experiments used to identify cause-effect relationships of earlier unexplained phenomenon. This tutorial is aimed at providing a background for the design of experiments and a bibliography to pursue further interest.