Birnbaum-Saunders Distribution: A Review of Models, Analysis and Applications

Birnbaum and Saunders introduced a two-parameter lifetime distribution to model fatigue life of a metal, subject to cyclic stress. Since then, extensive work has been done on this model providing different interpretations, constructions, generalizations, inferential methods, and extensions to bivariate, multivariate and matrix-variate cases. More than two hundred papers and one research monograph have already appeared describing all these aspects and developments. In this paper, we provide a detailed review of all these developments and at the same time indicate several open problems that could be considered for further research.