Software for Statistical Analysis of Weibull Distributions with Application to Gear Fatigue Data: User Manual with Verification

Abstract

The Weibull distribution has been widely adopted for the statistical description and inference of fatigue data. This document provides user instructions, examples, and verification for software to analyze gear fatigue test data. The software was developed presuming the data are adequately modeled using a two-parameter Weibull distribution. The calculations are based on likelihood methods, and the approach taken is valid for data that include type I censoring. The software was verified by reproducing results published by others.