Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel GREY‒ASMAA model for reliability growth evaluation in the large civil aircraft test flight phase.
Design/methodology/approach
As limited data are collected during the large civil aircraft test flight phase, which are not enough to meet the requirements of the ASMAA model for reliability growth, four basic GM(1, 1) models, even grey model, original difference grey model, even difference grey model and discrete grey model, are presented. Then both forward and backward grey models GM(1,1) are built to forecast and obtain virtual test data on left and right sides. Then the ASMAA model for reliability growth evaluation can be built based on original and virtual test data.
Findings
Aiming at the background of poor information data during the large civil aircraft test flight phase, first, a novel GREY‒ASMAA model, which was combined by the grey model GM(1,1) with the ASMAA model, has been put forward in this paper.
Practical implications
The GREY‒ASMAA model for reliability growth evaluation can be used to solve the problem of reliability growth evaluation with poor information data during the large civil aircraft test flight phase, and it has been used in reliability evaluation of C919 at the test flight stage.
Originality/value
This paper presents two new definitions of forward grey model GM(1,1) and backward grey model GM(1,1), as well as a novel GREY‒ASMAA model for reliability growth evaluation of large civil aircraft during test flight phase.