New concepts including variation probability,variation speed,and variation acceleration,were proposed and a reliability prediction model was established to predict the variation process of reliability of rolling bearing vibration performance based on the maximum entropy principle and Poisson process.The maximum entropy principle was applied to calculate the probability density function of sample data of the intrinsic sequence.According to Poisson process,variation number and variation frequency of performance data outside the confidence interval of intrinsic sequence were achieved for time series subdivided.Variation speed and variation acceleration of rolling bearing vibration performance were calculated by discrimination processing for time.The rolling bearing (type SKF6205) was used as an example to illustrate the applications of maximum entropy principle and Poisson process in analyzing variation process.Experimental investigation shows that the variation probability of reliability presents a nonlinear increase trend with the increase of wear diameter,which can be divided into initial running stage,normal performance degradation stage,and performance deterioration stage.Moreover,the reliability prediction model can be used to analyze variation process of reliability under the condition of poor information,which is proven to be a useful supplement to available reliability methods.