Reliability of Certain Class of Transportation Networks

Abstract

The reliabilityof a special class of technical objects - tree-like transportation networks is considered. It is argued that the indicators traditionally used to assess reliability in relation to such objects are not very informative and are ambiguously interpreted from a physical point of view. As a quantitative measure, an indicator of operational reliability is proposed and an engineering method for its calculation has been developed. It uses the features of the object, is based on an analogue of the Y-shaped structure-forming fragment of the network and is reduced to a repeating step-by-step computational procedure, when at each step the results of the calculation are obtained at the previous stage and used as initial data. Relationships are derived that allow extending this approach to the case when at the junction point of network elements not two, but, in general, n elements are combined. The advantages of the introduced indicator of the operational reliability of tree-like transportation networks are discussed and the ways of its further generalization and use are outlined