A New Discretization Approach With Application in Reliability Estimation.

This paper introduces a new discretization technique that retains the basic structure of the failure rate function of the original life distribution. Earlier approaches for discretizing a continuous random variable, reported in the literature so far, are moment equalization, and discrete concentration techniques. This proposed approach has been used for approximating the reliability of complex systems where exact determination of survival probability is analytically intractable. These applications show a reasonable degree of closeness between this new method and the simulated results. Admissibility of the proposed method over the methods of discrete concentration and numerical integration has also been established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]