Statistical reliability assessment for small sample of failure data of dumper diesel engines based on power law process and maximum likelihood estimation

Dumpers or dump trucks are used all over the world to move overburden from many opencast mines. Diesel engines are the main driving force behind the trucks. The frequency of damage due to the failure of diesel engines is enormous. Therefore, efforts are necessary to analyze failure to reduce the downtime periods. A detailed analysis of engine failure at the subsystem level needs to be done. Reliability analysis and maintenance planning remain the norm in this regard. The obstacle faced while analysing the reliability of dumpers was the availability of a large number of data failures. In this paper, this issue is addressed by using Common Beta Hypothesis test and Meta‐analysis test. The engine is divided into five subsystems. The result shows that all five subsystems pass the CBH test and Meta‐analysis test. Accordingly, the failure data is grouped. The trend test of grouped failure data shows that the Failure data of two subsystems follows the independent and identically distributed characteristics while the remaining three do not follow it. The reliability is estimated for all five subsystems. Finally, fuel supply subsystems show the highest reliability while the lowest value is seen for self‐starting subsystems.