The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

WEIBULL ANALYSIS USING R, IN A NUTSHELL

Jurgen Symynck1, Filip De Bal2
1

KaHo Sint-Lieven, [email protected]

2
KaHo Sint-Lieven, [email protected]

Abstract: This article gives a very short introduction to fatigue and reliability analysis using
the two-parameter Weibull model. To gain expert insight in the inner workings of commercial
analysis packages such as Reliasofts Weibull++ and superSMITH Weibull, the authors created an
open source alternative with a subset of analysis tools and made it freely available as an Open
Source package for the R statistical software. This article explains briefly how to use the software,
how Weibull plots are generated and how conclusions can be drawn. For the complete and most
recent version of this document, check ref. [1]. For more in-depth treatment of the subject, check
ref. [2].
Keywords: Weibull, R, open source software, fatigue, reliability, analysis

1
1.1

Introduction

on the general reliability of the specimens to be

made. This is where Weibull analysis comes
in.

The FATIMAT project

FATIMAT (FATigue In MATerials) (ref.

[3]) is a PWO project (ref. [4]) supported by
KaHo Sint-Lieven (ref. [5]).
Because there is an ever increasing need
for lighter, stronger and cheaper products,
designers need to be more and more concerned
about the fatigue and reliability properties of
their products. With the arrival of high
precision electromechanical actuators and
servopneumatic valves, it is possible for small
and medium-sized companies to conduct
fatigue and durability testing using these
cheaper alternatives to servohydraulic fatigue
testing machines. The FATIMAT project
studies these alternatives.
For example an engine mount, used to fix
car engines to a car chassis, can be tested by
cyclically compressing it between 10 [mm] and
20 [mm] on a Zwick/Roell EZ020 high speed
electromechanical spindle actuator. The load
frequency is 3 [Hz]. After some time, the
specimen will show signs of wear-out (in this
case oil leakage) that are detected by the
machine software. The test is then halted and
the failure time is recorded. This test is
repeated
(under
identical
loads and
circumstances!) for a number of specimens.
One of the subprojects of FATIMAT is to
analyze these failure data to allow conclusions

1.2

Commercial software packages.

Software packages like Reliasofts

Weibull++ (ref. [6]) or SuperSMITH Weibull
(ref. [7]) offer the reliability engineer very
powerful tools for analyzing and predicting
failure
behaviour.
Without
extensive
background knowledge and proper software
training however, it is not difficult to draw
faulty, expensive and often disastrous
conclusions. Next to this are some features
missing in one software package while others
have different default settings. Finding a
reason for these differences is not always
straightforward.
1.3

Open Source alternative

FATIMAT has a tradition of combining

modules of functionality from different
manufacturers and vendors to create flexible
and cost effective test systems. For example, a
servopneumatic dynamic test system can be
built with off-the-shelf pneumatic components,
a standard PC and readily available Open
Source software (ref. [8]). For the post-test
analyzing of the lifetime data, a similar
approach was taken. By using and creating
open source software, maximum transparency,
portability and connectivity is guaranteed.

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

By re-creating the analysis software from

scratch and compare its results with the
commercial packages, the authors gain a
unique perspective on the Weibull analysis and
lifetime analysis in general: they need to
justify every software design decision and
flawlessly implement sometimes complex and
daunting statistical theory to make the software
work. In time, the software will make an
unbiased comparison between the commercial
packages possible, based on the authors own
experiences.
Releasing the software as Open Source has
additional advantages:
-

The development website often serves

as an excellent knowledge base on the
topic (here: Weibull analysis). It tends
to bring together alike-thinking minds
from similar scientific fields.

There is maximum transparency

towards the used software techniques,
and default settings. All the
programming code can be consulted
online, with no restrictions.

Bug-fixing is relatively easy: anyone

who finds a bug can fix it themselves
and make the patch available for the
general public with no effort.

1.4

Providing software for free encourages

many people to check it out,
maximally exposing the Weibull
analysis. Thus, it sometimes acts as a
stepping stone towards more matured
and supported commercial software
packages.

There is almost no risk of losing the

source code, either accidentally or due
to loss of involvement from the
principal authors, because the most
stable and/ recent version is and
remains always available online.
Intended usage of the Weibull toolkit

The Weibull toolkit is targeted at analysing

fatigue and reliability test data, gathered in
controlled lab circumstances.
It is not
primarily meant to do analysis of real-life
failures. This means that functionality, tools

and settings that are not immediately useful or

meaningful in this specific usage domain are
left out at the time of writing.
1.5

Censored data

In many cases, mechanical-dynamical

testing means only a few specimens are tested
(3-8) until failure, after which the failure time
is recorded. This creates a complete or
uncensored dataset. Sometimes an upper test
duration limit is enforced, after which unfailed
specimen are taken from the machine and
labelled as survived. This kind of censored
data is called right censored data or
suspended data.
The Weibull toolkit can handle this type of
censored data, but for simplicity, this
(important) subject is not treated in this article;
check out ref. [2] for a more detailed treatment.
2

Why Weibull?

Invented by Swedish engineer, scientist,

and mathematician Waloddi Weibull in 1937,
Weibull analysis is widely used today for life
data (also called failure or survival) analysis.
For predicting future product failure, a
mathematical model is needed to extrapolate
failures from the past (either real-life failures
or by experiment) to the future. This model
needs to be precise and flexible enough to be
useful, but not overly complicated.
The Weibull distribution can be used to
predict failure times of products, even based on
extremely small sample sizes (two failures or
less!). A simple and useful plot is drawn to
visualize the observations: on the vertical axis,
the unreliability of the specimens is found
while on the horizontal axis one finds the
observation time. The double logarithmic scale
of the Weibull plots vertical axis makes the
Weibull Cumulative Distribution Function
(CDF) appear as a straight line, where the
parameter is the slope of the line.
In contrast to the in fatigue analysis
commonly used lognormal distribution, the
shape of the two-parameter Weibull function
can be fine-tuned to accommodate specific

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

failure distributions. In the Weibull family,

many other distributions are either exactly or
approximately included; amongst them the
normal and the exponential.
At least one author has pointed out that,
unless strong evidence of the underlying
failure mechanisms points to another
distribution, one should always choose the
two- parameter Weibull distribution as the
failure describing model, especially for sample
sizes smaller than 21 (ref. [9]).
3

The two-parameter Weibull

distribution

4.1

Weibull distributions come in two and

three-parameter variants. A third parameter can
be successfully used to describe failure
behaviour when there is a time period where
no failure CAN occur (e.g. ball bearing failures
due to wear). In most other cases, a two
parameter description is preferable.
= 1

[1]

The plots from the two-parameter Weibull

CDF (eq. [1]) can be divided in three
categories, depending on the magnitude of the
shape or slope parameter :
-

environment which was developed at Bell

Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent
Technologies) [] R provides a wide variety
of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling,
classical statistical tests, time-series analysis,
classification, clustering, ...) and graphical
techniques, and is highly extensible. [] R is
available as Free Software under the terms of
the Free Software Foundations GNU General
Public License in source code form. It
compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX
platforms and similar systems (including
FreeBSD and Linux), Windows and MacOS.

< 1 is a sign of infant mortality,

relatively more specimen fail early in
their expected lifespan.
= 1 indicates random failures not
related to lifetime.
> 1 is a sign of wear out failures .

The second parameter, the characteristic

life , also called the scale parameter
represents the age at which 63.2 [%] of the
specimen will have failed. A higher can
indicate that the overall durability of the
product is better.

A quick survey on the internet revealed no

free-and-open-source
alternatives
to
commercial packages for studying the Weibull
analysis. Because the R language already
supports many functions needed by Weibull
analysis, the authors decided to build a toolkit
for R providing the basic functionality needed
to analyze their lifetime data. Currently, the
toolkit is capable of generating Weibull plots,
similar to those that can be found in
commercial software.
R can be downloaded for no cost from its
homepage (ref. [10], [11]) and can be installed
on most computers. Essentially it is a consolelike application where the user enters
commands at the prompt. Some graphical
interfaces for R are available, and some
dedicated R code editors like Tinn-R (ref. [12])
making R easier to use.
The Weibull Toolkit is hosted online at
Sourceforge (ref. [13]) and can be downloaded
as an installable package. The source code can
be browsed online (ref. [14]) or downloaded
using the Git Fast version Control system
(ref. [15], [16]).
5

The R statistical programming

language
(from the R homepage, ref. [10], [11]):

R is a language and environment for

statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU
project which is similar to the S language and

The Weibull toolkit in R

Creating a Weibull plot

Lets assume that eight engine mounts

were tested under the previously mentioned
conditions (cyclic compressive sinewave load
alterations between 10 [mm] and 20 [mm], 3
[Hz], same environmental temperature and
humidity, ). The recorded observations are
149971, 70808, 133518, 145658, 175701,

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

50960, 126606 and 82329 cycles.

All
specimen were tested to failure (in this case:
failure by oil leakage) creating a complete
dataset.
The goal of the Weibull plot is to provide a
useful 2D representation of the observations.
In R, this dataset is created by opening the R
console and entering:
d <- data.frame(ob=c(149971, 70808, 133518, 145658,
175701, 50960, 126606, 82329), state=1)

This creates a dataframe named d with two

columns: ob (short for observation time)
and state (To learn more about the
dataframe object or any other object in R, enter
?data.frame at the prompt). The latter
represents the specimens status after the time
of observation: here, all the specimens have
failed, corresponding with status 1 or dead.
To see how the data looks, just enter d
(without quotation marks):
d
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
>

5.1

ob state
149971
1
70808
1
133518
1
145658
1
175701
1
50960
1
126606
1
82329
1

Parameter estimation using

Maximum Likelihood Estimation

The R language already supports the basic

functionality to perform Weibull analysis by
means of the survival package (ref. [17]). To
calculate the Weibull parameters, just run the
following code in the R console (the
survival package must be installed for
this code to work):
library(survival)
d <- data.frame(ob=c(149971, 70808, 133518,
145658, 175701, 50960, 126606, 82329), state=1)
s <- Surv(d$ob,d$state)
sr <- survreg(s~1,dist="weibull")
print(paste("beta =",1/sr$scale))
print(paste("eta =",exp(sr$coefficients[1])))

This will calculate estimates of and

based on Maximum Likelihood Estimation,
which uses the Likelihood function.

[1] "beta = 3.31363465580381"

[1] "eta = 130895.039243954"
>

The MLE method however has its

drawbacks: it is biased when only a small
number of observations are used, resulting in
skewed Weibull plots. A bias reduction
method exists (MLE-RBA) but it does not
completely remove the bias. Recalling the
toolkits usage environment (small sample
sizes with complete data), an alternative
method should be used.
5.2

Median Rank Regression

Recall that Weibull paper displays a Weibull

plot as a straight line where is its slope. To
create this line, a vertical plotting position is
assigned to the observation times (ranking).
These median ranks are equivalent to the
unreliability of the specimens population.
Then, by means of simple linear least-square
regression, the Weibull parameters are
calculated from the datapoints. When the
estimated parameters are interpreted as the
slope and intercept of a line, this results in the
Weibull plot.
There are some methods available to generate
these
ranks:
Cumulative
Binomial
Distribution
ranks
which
are
the
mathematically correct method for assigning
ranks to complete data; Incomplete Beta
Distribution ranks who can be used for
complete data or data with suspensions and
Bernards approximation ranks that are
calculated using a very simple approximation
formula and provide sufficiently accurate
ranks. Below is shown how the two functions
are implemented in the Weibulltoolkit.
...
# do not run this code; just for illustration
#
if(method == "qbeta") pp <- qbeta(0.5,i,n-i+1)
if(method == "bernard")pp <- (i-0.3)/(n+0.4)
...

Where pp = plot position; i = rank in

ordered list of observations and n = number of
observations.
The observations are ordered and assigned
a plotting position, based on one of the above
described methods (with the Incomplete Beta
Distribution method being the default). Note

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

that the ranking position depends on the

position of the observation in the ordered list
of observations, NOT the actual observation
time!
For small sample sizes (2-100) it is always
best practice to use Median Rank Regression
(MRR) to determine the Weibull parameters in
favour of MLE. Run the following code to
assign median ranks to the example data:
mrank.observation <- function (j, f){
# slimmed-down version of
# Weibulltoolkits mrank.observation()
r <- qbeta(0.5, j, f - j + 1);r}
mrank.data <- function (data = NULL){
# slimmed-down version of
# Weibulltoolkits mrank.data()
n <- nrow(data)
data$rank <- rank(data$ob, ties.method =
"first")
data$rrank <- (n + 1 - data$rank)
sdata <- data[order(data$rank), ]
sdata$arank <- sdata$rank
sdata$mrank <mrank.observation(sdata$arank, n)
data <- sdata[!is.na(sdata$mrank), ];data}
d <- data.frame(ob=c(149971, 70808, 133518,
145658, 175701, 50960, 126606, 82329), state=1)
d <- mrank.data(d)
>

...
[1] "beta = 2.5812750442969"
[1] "eta = 132511.801341605"
>

Although the same dataset is used in the

example for MLE and MRR, there is some
considerable difference between the values for
. In this case, it is the (non-bias reduced)
MLE method that suffers from bias when used
with that few observations.
The Weibull toolkit automates
above steps. Simply entering the
code will produce the Weibull
Weibulltoolkit package
installed for this code to work):

all of the
following
plot (the
must be

library(weibulltoolkit)
d <- data.frame(ob=c(149971, 70808, 133518,
145658, 175701, 50960, 126606, 82329), state=1)
plot.wb(d)

The above code block displays and

parameters and generates the Weibull plot.
Weibull plot
50000

5e+05

5e+06

50

50

90 99

Examine the contents of the median ranked

dataframe by entering d at the prompt
(without quotation marks):

5000

90 99

1000

maptowb <- function (y){log(log(1/(1 - y)))}

# copy of Weibulltoolkits maptowb()
fwb <- lm(log(d$ob) ~ maptowb(d$mrank),d)
print(summary(fwb))
print(paste(
"beta =",1/coefficients(fwb)[2]))
print(paste(
"eta =", exp(coefficients(fwb)[1])))

After displaying some useful results from

the regression process, it displays the
calculated Weibull parameters and , based
on MRR:
Call:

20
5000

50000

5e+05

5e+06

Age

Figure 1: Standard Weibull plot from the

Weibull Toolkit. The curves are confidence
bounds. The middle (straight) line is the
Median Rank Regression (MRR) fitted line,
representing the two Weibull parameters and
.
6

2
1
0.5

B10 = NA | 55420
B1 = NA | 22300
B0.1 = NA | 9123
B0.01 = NA | 3738

1000

10

20
10
5
2
1

CI = 90 [%]
lower CB = 5 [%]
higher CB = 95 [%]
R = 1000

0.1

After ranking the observations, a line can

be fitted through the datapoints, calculating
the Weibull parameter estimates. Fit a line
through the data by executing the following
code after the previous code block:

(Age ; Unreliability [%])

curve (MRR, X on Y)
beta (shape,slope) = 2.581
eta (scale) = 132500
n (fail | susp.) = 8 (8 | 0)
r^2 | CCC^2 = 0.9375 | 0.8425 (good)

0.5

ob state rank rrank arank

mrank
50960
1
1
8
1 0.08299596
70808
1
2
7
2 0.20113119
82329
1
3
6
3 0.32051897
126606
1
4
5
4 0.44015520
133518
1
5
4
5 0.55984480
145658
1
6
3
6 0.67948103
149971
1
7
2
7 0.79886881
175701
1
8
1
8 0.91700404

0.1

6
2
8
7
3
4
1
5
>

Unreliability [%]

B-life

When the Weibull plot is created,

predictions of the failure behaviour of the
population of specimens can be made.

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

The B-life is the age at which a certain

percentage
of
the
population
under
investigation is expected to fail. For example,
the B10-life for our population of engine
mounts is 55420. The B0.1-life is 9123. Just
draw a horizontal line at the 10 [%] resp. 0.1
[%] unreliability level and find the intersection
with the fitted (straight) line. Then, read the
age from the horizontal axis.
6.1

Confidence in predicted B-lives

For a sample of observations with

calculated and , a 5 [%] lower confidence
bound for B-lives has the following meaning:
The real, unknown B-life of the
specimens will, with a 5 [%] frequency, be
smaller than the given B-life at the 5 [%]
confidence bound. So this means that, with a
95 [%] frequency, the real, unknown B-life
exceeds the B-life at the 5 [%] confidence
bound).
In the provided example, the B10 life is
approximately 26000 with 95 [%] confidence
level, the B0.1 life is only 1140 with 95 [%]
confidence level (the number following the
capital B indicates the unreliability
percentage). By using confidence bounds one
is able to make reliable predictions based on a
very small sample set; but it is clear that these
bounds will be so wide that the resulting Blives will be so small that they are of little
practical use. Testing more specimens will
narrow the confidence bounds.
In the automotive industry, a confidence
level of 50 [%] is often used. Actually, this
means that they do not use confidence bounds
at all but read their B-lives straight from the
fitted line. In these cases they trust that testing
a sufficient amount of specimen compensates
for the lack of confidence. Much higher
confidence levels are used (90 [%] to 99.9 [%]
or more) in the medical and aircraft industry.
Confidence bounds are a key point where
commercial software packages differ in
implementations and availability. While Beta
Binomial Bounds (the dotted lines in fig. 1)
are generated by an simple formula, others are
more complex or use Monte Carlo simulations
(e.g. Pivotal Confidence Bounds using Monte

Carlo simulation). Discussion of the generation

of these confidence bounds is beyond the
scope of this article, check out ref. [2] for a
more detailed treatment.
7

Conclusion

The commonly used Weibull model and

its usage in fatigue and reliability analysis are
introduced in this article. The authors
explained the reasons to create their own
analysis software, providing unique insights in
the inner workings, strengths and weaknesses
of commercial software. The toolkit is written
for the statistical programming language R,
ensuring minimal programming effort is
needed to create powerful software.
The Weibull toolkit is constantly under
active development, features are added and the
code is being streamlined. It is available under
a GPL3 license, making it Open Source
software, so anyone can participate in the
development. Ultimately, the Weibull toolkit
will serve as a training tool for better
understanding Weibull analysis and lifetime
modelling in general, and for learning the
proper usage of the commercial software tools.
8
[1]

References
http://mechanics.kahosl.be/fatimat/inde
x.php/downloads-andinformation/40/171
download area from the FATIMAT
projects website with the most recent
version of this document.

[2]

The Weibull model in fatigue and

reliability analysis: an introduction &
implementations in R (Jurgen
Symynck Filip De Bal KaHo SintLieven 2010)
http://mechanics.kahosl.be/fatimat/inde
x.php/downloads-andinformation/40/77
in-depth treatment of the subject of this
article.

[3]

http://mechanics.kahosl.be/fatimat

The XVI-th INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE TEHNOMUS

Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava - ROMANIA, May 13-14, 2011

[4]

download the toolkit package, named

weibulltoolkit_0.1.6.zip.
2) For simplicity of these instructions,
move the zip file to c:\temp.
3) Open the R console and type at the
prompt:

http://www.kahosl.be/site/index.php?p
=/nl/page/153/
homepage of the PWO funding channel
on the website of KaHo Sint-Lieven.

[5]

http://www.kahosl.be

[6]

http://www.reliasoft.com

[7]

http://www.barringer1.com/wins.htm

[8]

http://mechanics.kahosl.be/fati
mat/index.php/multimedia/36/1
93

http://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=g2IczVyuQkQ

install.packages("c:/temp/weibulltoolkit_0.1.6.
zip",repos=NULL)

... resulting in the successful

installation of the toolkit.
Check the toolkit by typing the
following code at the prompt, resulting
in the execution of
some demo
routines:
library(weibulltoolkit)
demo(weibulltoolkit)

Video clip of an experimental

servopneumatic fatigue test bench.
[9]

A Comparison Between The Weibull

And Lognormal Models Used To
Analyse Reliability Data. (Mr. ChiChao Lui, PhD 1997, dissertation from
University of Nottingham)

[10]

http://www.r-project.org/

[11]

http://cran.r-project.org/

[12]

http://www.sciviews.org/Tinn-R/

[13]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/weibullt
oolkit/

[14]

http://weibulltoolkit.git.sourceforge.net
/git/gitweb-index.cgi

[15]

http://git-scm.com/

[16]

http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/

[17]

http://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/survival/

9
9.1

Notes
Installing the toolkit under Windows
1) Go to the Weibulltoolkits homepage
on Sourceforge.net (ref. [13]) and

You can get help on the toolkits main

function by entering ?plot.wb at the
prompt.
9.2

Code compatibility

Because the toolkit is under perpetual

heavy development, currently the examples in
this article that make use of the Weibull toolkit
are only guaranteed to work using the toolkit
with
version
number
0.1.6
(weibulltoolkit_0.1.6.tar.gz
or
weibulltoolkit_0.1.6.zip).
When
downloading the source code using GIT, go to
the projects website to find instructions on
identifying compatible code.