Model-based reliability analysis

摘要

The main function of a heavy truck is to transport goods, with ton-kilometers/year as an example of a major quantitative performance measure. Furthermore, the truck is directly operated by a driver, who has several additional functional requirements, of both ergonomic and communicative characters. Failure of these functions may be a subjective experience, differing between drivers, but the failures are still important. Today's just-in-time delivery systems rely on getting the goods on time, and this requires high availability. Availability is reduced not only by technical failures but also by subjectively experienced failures, because these also require repairs, or downtime. Product reliability is a systems property that cannot be attributed to a single component. It is in many cases related to interaction between components, or to interaction between humans and the technical system, in the case of subjectively experienced failures. Reliability assessments of systems with interactive functions require a system model that includes the interfaces between the technical system and human features that are carriers of interactive functions. This paper proposes a model of system architecture, for the purpose of reliability assessments, that integrates different and complementary representations, such as function-means diagrams and a design structure matrix. The novelty of the presented approach is that it treats and integrates the technical and the human subsystems through the human-technical system interfaces. The proposed systems reliability approach is described and verified with a component analysis case study of an extended truck cab and driver system.