Interactive Reliability Analysis on a Microcomputer

SYNOPTIC ABSTRACT

This paper describes an interactive menu-driven tool for reliability analysis on a microcomputer. The tool can analyze series-parallel reliability networks with K-out-of-N redundancy structures. The user can configure and input structures in this class using a hierarchical approach involving nested components. Given the characteristics of the ultimate building blocks of the structure, the software computes cost and availability measures for the overall structure and all of its components.

Key Words and Phrases:

• reliability analysis
• series-parallel systems
• K-out-of-N systems
• microcomputer-based decision tools
• hierarchical structures