Small-Sample Reliability Assessment of Electromagnetic Relays

The work presented in this book was supported by Jiangsu University of Science and Technology. As critical components in electrical control systems, electromagnetic relays are particularly vulnerable to contact degradation and failure, which may ultimately lead to system-level malfunctions. Accordingly, reliability assessment based on Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction has become an important research topic. However, relay degradation is inherently governed by coupled multi-physical processes and is characterized by highly nonlinear and uncertain failure mechanisms. In addition, the high cost and long duration of life testing severely limit the availability of complete degradation datasets, giving rise to a typical small-sample problem. Furthermore, conventional data-driven methods generally assume parameter independence or linear relationships and fail to capture latent, time-varying nonlinear dependencies, thereby restricting prediction accuracy and robustness.