Reliability Importance and Invariant Optimal Allocation

The reliability importance of a component is a partial derivative of the system reliability with respect to this component reliability. When all components are i.i.d., the reliability importance is called the B-importance. Relationships between reliability allocation and the reliability importance for general coherent systems are explored. The invariant optimal allocation is an allocation related only to the relative ordering rather than the magnitude of the component reliabilities. A strong heuristic method (LK heuristic) is developed to search for an ideal allocation through the application of the reliability importance.The following conclusions are drawn: if there exists an invariant optimal allocation for a system, the optimal allocation is to assign component reliabilities according to the B-importance ordering. Furthermore, the allocation generated by the LK heuristic is the optimal allocation.     

On the importance of components for multistate monotone systems

Using decomposition results we obtain an extension of the Barlow and Proschan concept of reliability importance of system components to multistate monotone systems. In this context we consider both the reliability importance of components in a modular set and the reliability importance of a module for the system.     

基于系统可靠性的组件综合重要度变化机理分析

重要度理论是一种重要的系统薄弱环节识别和评估方法,被广泛应用于系统可靠性设计优化、维修资源分配、维修决策以及风险分析等领域。本文以组件状态转移率为纽带,分析了组件综合重要度对系统可靠性的影响机理,识别对系统可靠性变化影响最大的组件,综合重要度评估了单位时间内系统可靠性的变化。首先给出综合重要度的定义;其次讨论系统可靠性的组件重要度表示方法;最后在串联和并联系统中,分析综合重要度随着组件状态转移率的变化机理。     

基于失效边数概率分布的K-终端网络重要度计算方法

重要度是现代网络薄弱环节识别的常用工具,其能量化网络不同的边对网络可靠性的影响程度。以往的K-终端网络重要度计算方法需已知网络边的可靠性以及边发生失效相互独立的条件,不能满足现实网络对于网络重要度计算的需求。鉴于此,为了突破这些条件的限制,本文在给定失效边数目的概率分布的背景下,发展K-终端网络重要度的计算方法,并提供一个十二面体网络的算例,验证了该计算方法的有效性和正确性。     

FTA法和重要度分析在某系统可靠性中的应用

应用失效树分析（Fault Tree Analysis）法（简称FTA法）,对某型火炮遥控系统进行了可靠性分析,建立了该系统的失效树,并在此基础上计算了该系统的可靠性参数,讨论了部件的概率重要度和相对比重要度,并把部件的概率重要度和相对比重要度推广到了分系统,结合所建的失效树给出了相应的结果。通过重要度分析,找到了提高系统可靠性中的途径。     

多约束条件下三状态复杂系统的优化分配

研究了三状态复杂系统在多约束条件下可靠度的问题.以串-并联系统为研究对象,利用选取重要度来提高系统可靠度的方法,获得了重要度对系统可靠度有着重要影响的结果,并通过算法、例题对实例进行了验证.     

Combining sources of evidence with reliability and importance for decision making

The combination of sources of evidence with reliability has been widely studied within the framework of Dempster-Shafer theory (DST), which has been employed as a major method for integrating multiple sources of evidence with uncertainty. By the fact that sources of evidence may also be different in importance, for example in multi-attribute decision making (MADM), we propose the importance discounting and combination method within the framework of DST to combine sources of evidence with importance, which is composed of an importance discounting operation and an extended Dempster’s rule of combination. Three evidence combination axioms are proposed and explored to uncover the differences between reliability and importance in evidence reasoning. Furthermore, a general scheme is proposed for combination of sources of evidence with both reliability and importance. An example of car performance evaluation is studied to show the efficiency of the new general scheme.     

System reliability and component importance when components can be swapped upon failure

Resilience of systems to failures during functioning is of great practical importance. One of the strategies that might be considered to enhance reliability and resilience of a system is swapping components when a component fails, thus replacing it by another component from the system that is still functioning. This paper studies this scenario, particularly with the use of the survival signature to quantify system reliability, where it is assumed that such a swap of components requires these components to be of the same type. We examine the effect of swapping components on a reliability importance measure for the specific components, and we also consider the joint reliability importance of two components. Such swapping of components may be an attractive means toward more resilient systems and could be an alternative to adding more components to achieve redundancy of repair and replacement activities.     

The influence of the node criticality relation on some measures of component importance

For different reliability importance measures we prove that the criticality relation between nodes can completely determine the most important component in a system. In particular, we prove that in k-out-of-n systems, the ranking of component reliabilities determines the ranking of component importance for, at least, three different reliability importance measures.     

多态关联系统结构重要度分析

多态关联系统重要度是可靠性分析的重要研究内容之一，它可用于可靠度分配，系统的优化设计和指导系统运行管理等。本文定义了５类物理意义明确的结构重要度，由实例看出，这些重要度能较好反映系统状态的性质及部件对系统状态的影响。     

The cross-entropy method with patching for rare-event simulation of large Markov chains

There are various importance sampling schemes to estimate rare event probabilities in Markovian systems such as Markovian reliability models and Jackson networks. In this work, we present a general state-dependent importance sampling method which partitions the state space and applies the cross-entropy method to each partition. We investigate two versions of our algorithm and apply them to several examples of reliability and queueing models. In all these examples we compare our method with other importance sampling schemes. The performance of the importance sampling schemes is measured by the relative error of the estimator and by the efficiency of the algorithm. The results from experiments show considerable improvements both in running time of the algorithm and the variance of the estimator.     

A cost-based importance measure for system components: An extension of the Birnbaum importance

In reliability engineering, component importance measures are used to prioritise components in a system for purposes such as reliability improvement and maintenance planning. Existing importance measures have paid little attention to the costs incurred by maintaining a system and its components within a given time period. Cost-effectiveness analysis, however, is critically important in increasingly competitive markets. This paper proposes a new cost-based importance measure which considers costs incurred by maintaining a system and its components within a finite time horizon. Possible extensions are discussed and examples are given to show the use of the new measure.     

基于Markov的模块化电传操纵系统软件可靠性模型

电传操纵系统是影响飞行安全的关键系统,建立有效的电传操纵系统软件可靠性模型是软件可靠性测试和验证的基础.针对某型飞机系统安全性设计中横向通道电传操纵系统软件可靠性建模问题,建立了模块化的基于Markov的电传操纵系统软件可靠性模型.提出了综合考虑重要度和复杂度的软件可靠性指标分配方法,将可靠性目标分配到子模块.最后,通过实例验证了所建立的模型和指标分配方法的有效性.     

面向任务保障的多组件系统效益优化策略

为了保障系统在执行任务期间高可靠、高效益的运行,从系统效益的角度出发,构建了系统可靠性模型,采用边际效应思想构建了效益重要度,提出了一种面向任务保障的多组件系统效益优化策略。当系统可靠度下降到设定阈值时,计算系统各组件的效益重要度,选择效益重要度最大的组件进行备件分配,如此进行迭代,直到完成任务保障,形成最优的备件分配序列。通过该策略实现了以运行效益最优为目标,以系统可靠度和任务保障时长为约束的备件分配序列。最后,通过数值仿真验证了该策略的可行性。     

一种面向可靠性的改进不确定性重要度分析方法

作为识别和评估系统薄弱环节的有效工具之一的重要度理论,一直都被广泛应用于系统可靠性和安全性工程。而作为其主要环节的不确定性重要度分析更是扮演着不可或缺的角色。因此,为有效表征多态系统的可靠性,本文给出了一种变换数据处理方式的改进不确定性重要度分析方法。该模型是以两个累积分布函数之间的空间几何距离为基础,通过改变随机输入变量的不确定性范围和对应分布情况,模拟和描述输入对系统输出变量的相对影响趋势,并以两个累积分布函数之间的定积分面积表示。最后利用系统故障树对其进行不确定性重要度分析。结果表明,空间几何距离是一种用来表示输入变化对输出分布变化的相对影响的不确定性重要度度量的有效工具。     

Equipment reliability and maintenance

The review paper addresses two main topics; (i) identifying procedures presently in use or being developed for assessing or predicting the reliability of equipment, and (ii) identifying OR practices that can improve equipment reliability through objectively determined maintenance practices.As background to these topics, basic statistical concepts are identified and the importance of the Weibull distribution in reliability and maintenance studies is justified.     

Reliability Estimation of Classification Algorithms. I. Introduction to the Problem. Point Frequency Estimates

The study deals with estimating the reliability of classification algorithms. The present article (the first of three) examines the statistical methods used for point estimation of the reliability of classifiers in the frequency approach. The estimation results are applicable to the small-sample case, which is of considerable importance in practice.     

Fast computation of bounds for two-terminal network reliability

In this paper, an algorithm for the fast computation of network reliability bounds is proposed. The evaluation of the network reliability is an intractable problem for very large networks, and hence approximate solutions based on reliability bounds have assumed importance. The proposed bounds computation algorithm is based on an efficient BDD representation of the reliability graph model and a novel search technique to find important minpaths/mincuts to quickly reduce the gap between the reliability upper and lower bounds. Furthermore, our algorithm allows the control of the gap between the two bounds by controlling the overall execution time. Therefore, a trade-off between prediction accuracy and computational resources can be easily made in our approach. The numerical results are presented for large real example reliability graphs to show the efficacy of our approach.     

Generalized moment-independent importance measures based on Minkowski distance

Importance measures have been widely studied and applied in reliability and safety engineering. This paper presents a general formulation of moment-independent importance measures and several commonly discussed importance measures are unified based on Minkowski distance (MD). Moment-independent importance measures can be categorized into three classes of MD importance measures, i.e. probability density function based MD importance measure, cumulative distribution function based MD importance measure and quantile based MD importance measure. Some properties of the proposed MD importance measures are investigated. Several new importance measures are also derived as special cases of the generalized MD importance measures and illustrated with some case studies.     

Proximity between life distributions and exponential distributions (I)

Many classes of life distributions have been introduced into reliability theory. Because of the importance of exponential distributions in reliability theory, it is interesting to study the difference between life distributions and exponential distributions. In this paper, we study the proximity between the life distribution in various classes and the exponential distribution. We shall give some simple upper bounds.This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.