General algorithms for calculating system reliability

Abstract

It is well-known that the key to calculating system reliability lies in finding disjoint S-O-P expression of the system structure functions. In this paper two general algorithms, direct sharp and recursive sharp, are developed for this purpose. They are suitable not only for coherent systems, but non-coherent systems as well. Especially, the recursive sharp algorithm has more advantages than the direct sharp algorithm. It not only has more rapid computation speed than existing methods have, but also simultaneously obtains disjoint covers of success and failure events of the system, which are useful in calculating the time-specific frequency of system failure. In addition, the recursive sharp algorithm can yield good approximations of the reliability when the system is so large that computation time becomes prohibitive.