Due to uncertainties in the deterioration process of long service-life assets, assessing reliability and planning maintenance and inspection activities are often difficult tasks. Most of the methods developed use operational or historical data from the manufacturer to predict the deterioration of the asset and estimate its reliability. However, in practice, such failure data is often scarce (e.g. very rare events) and the reliability prediction models might not be adapted to the operation of the user. In addition, available data gathered from maintenance or inspection tasks might only inform about a short period of time, and it might be difficult to obtain the corresponding reliability predictions as the associated uncertainty is still significant. Hence, this paper introduces a reliability assessment method that quantifies uncertainties regarding the failure of long service-life components. It combines Cooke’s classical method (also known as Structured Expert Judgement) with a histogram technique, creating a performance-based method to assess uncertainty in components lifetime distributions. A case study on railway wheelsets is analysed to illustrate the effectiveness of such approach. The results show that the presented method is able to assess failure rates, which can support decisions in reliability-based maintenance of engineering systems.

由于长使用寿命资产的劣化过程存在不确定性，因此评估可靠性以及规划维护和检查活动通常是一项艰巨的任务。大多数开发的方法使用来自制造商的操作或历史数据来预测资产的恶化并估计其可靠性。然而，在实践中，此类故障数据通常很少（例如非常罕见的事件），并且可靠性预测模型可能无法适应用户的操作。此外，从维护或检查任务中收集的可用数据可能只能提供很短的时间，并且可能难以获得相应的可靠性预测，因为相关的不确定性仍然很大。因此，本文介绍了一种可靠性评估方法，该方法可量化有关长使用寿命组件故障的不确定性。它结合了 Cooke 的经典方法（也称为结构化专家判断）和直方图技术，创建了一种基于性能的方法来评估组件寿命分布的不确定性。对铁路轮对的案例研究进行了分析，以说明这种方法的有效性。结果表明，所提出的方法能够评估故障率，这可以支持工程系统基于可靠性的维护决策。对铁路轮对的案例研究进行了分析，以说明这种方法的有效性。结果表明，所提出的方法能够评估故障率，这可以支持工程系统基于可靠性的维护决策。对铁路轮对的案例研究进行了分析，以说明这种方法的有效性。结果表明，所提出的方法能够评估故障率，这可以支持工程系统基于可靠性的维护决策。