An Algorithm to Determine the Reliability of a Complex System
- 1 November 1969
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Transactions on Reliability
- Vol. R-18 (4) , 169-174
- https://doi.org/10.1109/tr.1969.5216346
Abstract
The method most often suggested for determining the reliability of a system is to construct a reliability network, enumerate from the network all mutually exclusive working states of the system, calculate the probability of occurrence of each working state, and sum these probabilities. For a complex system this is not a practical method for there is a very large number of working states. Esary and Proschan suggest a lower bound approximation to reliability that requires the enumeration of a much smaller set of system states. These states are called minimal cuts. An algorithm is presented to determine the set of minimal cuts and thus calculate a lower bound to system reliability. The algorithm is intended for digital-computer implementation and computational times are provided.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- An Implicit Enumeration Scheme for Proper Cut GenerationTechnometrics, 1970
- The Reliability of Redundant Multiple-Line NetworksIEEE Transactions on Reliability, 1964
- Coherent Structures of Non-Identical ComponentsTechnometrics, 1963