How to calculate MTTF

A question from a corrosion engineer on how to calculate MTTF, and my response.

A Question and my Response on MTTF

So this corrosion engineers walks into NoMTBF and send me a message.

The Questions

Hi, I am corrosion engineer. May be you know for risk assessment of heat ex-changer tube bundle in API-581 , mean time to failure (MTTF) term is defined and used for risk assessment.

Would you please give me more information about MTTF and what history data required to calculate MTTF?

Thank u so much

My Response

Hi ,

First off MTTF and similar metrics are used for situations with a constant failure rate. Meaning that every hour a piece of equipment has the same chance to failure as any other hour, anytime.

This is generally not true and certainly not true for corrosion failures. When the right conditions exist, corrosion starts, grows and eventually over time leads to failures. The older the equipment the more likely it will fail due to corrosion, thus not a constant failure rate.

My advice is to avoid using MTTF or MTBF.

I would take a look at the models and data you have and use Weibull or other life data distribution to model the time to failure. From there you can convert to MTTF although it will not be meaningful during the first half of the lifetime generally by a wide margin.

I would ask the risk analysis folks what time frames they need failure rate information and provide estimates suitable for each time frame. An overall MTTF is pretty misleading and may alter the risk assessment results.

If you’d like to talk about better ways to work between reliability and risk assessments, let me know.

Just dawned on me I didn’t answer your question.

The data you need for the calculation is the total hours of operation of the equipment divided by the number of failures – pretty simple. So if you have 100 pumps, and all but one runs for 100 hours. The one fails at say 50 hours. Then the calculation is (( 99 x 100 ) + (1 x 50)) / 1 failure = for mttf of 9950 hours.

If there are no failure, still tally operating hours and divide by one (rather than zero when bad things mathematically occur).


Two things.

  1. Be sure what you are measuring and reporting using MTTF actually has a constant failure rate or close enough to constant that it doesn’t matter.
  2. Send over your questions and maybe become the next NoMTBF blog post.

Third and most important, if you have a NoMTBF button or mug or whatever, please take a picture of it in the wild and send over. Also send along a short note on how it has helped start conversations around MTBF.

I’ll create a page on the site showcasing the ways these devices are starting conversations.

Author: Fred Schenkelberg


22 thoughts on “How to calculate MTTF”

  1. Hi Fred,
    Great explanation. Thank you.
    Would you please help with this example,
    One plant, 10 components all belong to the plant and each component have a small list of at what hours of operation they have failed.
    without using software could you point me to the right direction of how to calculate MTTF and the Reliability of the Plant? any small numeric example would shed lights.
    using histogram …would it help for this calculation?
    Thank you very much for your time.



    1. Hi Arash,

      To estimate MTTF is pretty simple (not always useful – see

      Tally up the time the individual units (the 10 components) have been operating and divide by the number of failures.

      For the overall system, it’s the same, how long has the system been running divided by the number of failures.

      For many systems you really want to know the availability, not MTTF or MTBF, especially is the total repair time is greater than about 1% of the total time. Then look for availability.

      So if I have five units (one of the 10 components) that have failed and one that is still operating. Let’s say that all four failed at 25 hours of operation, and the one till running has been doing so fro 20 hours. The MTTF is 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 + 20 = 120 and there are four failures, so MTTF = 120 / 4 = 30 hours.



  2. Thank you Fred for the explenation. Helpful as always.

    As you mentioned in the prevoius posts, to calculate the MTTF we assume a constant rate of failure. Otherwise I have to use Weibull. Doing so is there a way to estimate the Alpha and Beta for components?
    For system’s reliability I use blockdiagrm (on how components are related in a system) to calculate the system’s reliability. Your opinion?



    1. Hi Arash,

      If you assume a constant rate of failure, then MTTF is the only parameter you need to estimate. Using the exponential distribution you can calculate the reliability at any point in time, R(t)=exp[-t/mttf]

      Making the assumption of constant failure rate the beta term is 1.

      If you have time to failure data, then fitting a Weibull to the data is one way to get the estimate of the beta and eta parameters. Another way is to use published or previous studies for the specific failure mechanism.

      For a system with different components that each have different time to failure distributions, simply use the reliability function for each component and solve for the time of interest.



  3. Hi Fred,

    For every Cumulative Distrubiution Function F(t) point on the Weibull graph there would be two associated UCL and LCL points on 95% confidence.
    How do I calculated these two points for every modifed time to failure (Bernard’s approximation)?
    Thank you

  4. Dear fred,i am glad i stumbled on this website, please can you help me with the formula or way to calculate Reliability that does not assume a constant failure rate. tanx

    1. Hi Collins,

      Reliability has four elements, function, environment, probability, and duration. If you have a product or system and time to failure information, you can determine the probability of surviving a duration by determining the percentage of units that survive the duration.

      When working with a design or a prediction, then it gets a bit tricker and involved understanding the dominant failure mechanisms and failure models.

      If you’d like to calculate the time to failure distribution and want to do it by hand, you may find the short tutorial, Calculating Lognormal Distribution Parameters of interest. Of course that only is useful if the distribution reasonable describes the pattern of your time to failure data.



  5. Just wondering what you had in mind when you mentioned “if you’d like to talk about better ways to work between reliability and risk assessments, let me know” in your initial response.

    1. Hi Steve, I am suggesting not using MTTF and instead gather and use the time to failure information directly. A Weibull distribution is good place to start. Understand the changing nature of the failure rate, that is a much better way to connect your work to reliability. cheers, Fred

  6. Hi Fred,

    I was running a test (endurance test) where I’ve submerged 10 electrical units in a water tank and counted the hours until failure of each unit.
    So, I have a list of 10 cumulative hour to failure. (of which 2 are still working…)
    How would you recommend me to treat that data? I’d like eventually to have some sort of an index on ‘how well can that product withstand under water’ (in order to compare to other products) ? Adding to it , I’d like to have A Mean Time To Failure (notice: once the unit fails I do not fix it) or similar – until the probability of failure comes to let’s say 1% ?

    I have JMP , if this helps.

    Thank you in advance

    Yonatan K.

    1. I’m not very familiar with JMP yet you may be able to fit a Weibull distribution to the data including the two right censored points. I would not bother to calculate the MTTF or MTBF as it is really not all that useful. Why would someone want to know the average time to failure, instead of when the first percentile is expected to fail?



  7. If a component has mttf of 12 weeks and the component is changed before 12 weeks, does this means failure will be avoided?
    I know it wont be avoided but can i have a bit detail answer.

    1. Hi Dines,

      No of course not, and I suspect you already knew this.

      Let’s say the item really does have a constant hazard rate and the exponential distribution fits the failure pattern over time rather well… then the MTTF is the inverse of the chance of failure each hour. Think of it as rolling a die with many sides and if it turns up 1, we call it a failure. So, if the MTTF is 20,000 hours, that means each hour there is a 1 in 20,000 chance of failure.

      Over 20k hours you would roll the die 20,000 times.

      The math works out to there being about a 63 percent chance you will have a failure prior to 20k hours.

      Now, the actual failure rate may be decreasing over time or increasing over time, so my example won’t apply exactly. We’d have to understand more than just the given of MTTF. But it would be likely there will be a failure sooner than you outlined.

      In order for replacement to improve your availability (avoiding unscheduled failure) then, if the item has an increasing failure rate, and you replace the item when the chance of failure is deemed too high, you will minimize unwanted failures (not eliminate them entirely)

      Hope that helps.



  8. hi fred, I have a situation were I am trying to calculate MTTF for a single pump , were the pump is in 2X100 configuration. the pump s are operated by switching them every 6 months. So in 10 years each pump runs for 5 years . The total failure between the two pump is 6 . Whats my MTTF
    My answer is : total uptime for one pump/ number of failure of that pump
    5/3= 1.666.
    is that right??

    1. It is that easy, and it is also that not useful for any purpose that I can image.

      Instead if you have the operating time till failure for those six failures, that may allow sorting out a rough estimate of a time to failure distribution. Of, if the pumps are repairable systems, then plot using a mean cumulative function – again looking for information on the changing failure rate over time.



  9. Sir, we are fresher and we have to calculate the reliability of a system. The system consist of 10 parts .And we have to find reliability of system.i have to develop a java program.So i am assuming that MTBF will be given to me and with that i am calculating the failure rate and then reliability.
    So i am doing in a right way.
    please help.?

    1. Hi Rajat,

      Basically, you are on the right track. You may or may not receive MTBF for the parts. Here’s a couple of article that may help.

      and you need to consider how the 10 parts are organized reliability-wise. In series, where any one part failure means a system failure, or are some parts in parallel. If in parallel then it’s a slightly different model.

      of course, your system may be more complex and there are other models that can describe your system.



  10. Hi Fred,
    could you please help me out on this?
    20 components with constant failure rate was observed after 25 hours of use and seven failed at the following hours 2.7, 8.7, 10.7, 15.7, 16.7, 20.7, 24.7 while 13 were still functioning. How do i calculate the mean time to failure.

    1. Hi Nathaniel, if you did not replace any failed units simply sum the total operating time for both those that have failed and haven’t. Divide by the number of failures.

      Of course that is a pretty meaningless figure you would have calculated. Instead look at the time to failure and censored data using a Weibull analysis. Much more informative.



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