Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

During this project a number of topics in the area of combinatorial and network reliability were investigated. This research resulted in both new theoretical advancements and practical reliability analysis and optimization software. For reliability purposes a system consists of a set of components which are organized into a particular structure. Individual components can fail and certain combinations of component failure can lead to the failure of the system. For reliability analysis problems, we are given the set of components together with failure probabilities for each component and the definition of the system's structure, i.e. the manner in which the components are interconnected to form the system. The reliability analysis problem is then to compute the failure probability of the system. For reliability optimization problems, we are given the above information together with component costs. Two classes of reliability optimization problems can then be defined. The first is to maximize system reliability subject to a budget constraint and the second to minimize cost subject to achieving a minimize level of system reliability. All of the above problems are important in the design of reliable systems. With a reliability analysis algorithm at hand, the designer would propose a number of designs and then use an analysis algorithm to evaluate and choose from the set of potential designs.