An algorithm in order to implement reliability exponential approximations

✍ Scribed by J.L. Bon; J. Collet

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 414 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0951-8320
• DOI: 10.1016/0951-8320(94)90030-2

✦ Synopsis

Calculation of the reliability of large repairable systems is discussed here. We first present the background: a rule-based model and exponential approximations. The rule-based model allows us to describe very large and complex systems. The exponential approximations simplify the reliability computation, reducing it to the computation of some mean sojourn times, and a probability: the probability of going from the perfect-operation state to the system-failure state.

In order to compute this probability, we propose an algorithm with the following characteristics: it assumes the process is a semi-Markov process, it uses an exploration of graph circuitless sequences, it allows us to use a stop criterion, it is not suited for systems with a large number of active redundancies. We tested this algorithm on both theoretical and real cases, and the results were satisfactory.