Influence of component uncertainty on reliability assessment of systems with continuous states

摘要

Existing reliability evaluation methods are based on the availability of knowledge about component states. However, component states are often uncertain or unknown, especially during the early stages of the development of new systems. In such cases it is important to understand how uncertainties will affect system reliability assessment. Another shortcoming of existing methods is that they only consider systems whose components have discrete states. For those whose components have continuous states, these methods may not be applicable. Using Monte-Carlo simulation, this paper proposed a method to assess the reliability of systems with continuous distribution of component states. This method will also be useful when we do not have enough knowledge on component states and related probabilities. Comparison of two examples proves that component uncertainty has significant influence on the assessment of system reliability.