Recent advances in science and technology have made modern computing and
engineering systems more powerful and sophisticated than ever. The
increasing complexity and scale imply that system reliability problems
not only continue to be a challenge but also require more efficient
models and solutions. This is the first book systematically covering the
state-of-the-art binary decision diagrams and their extended models,
which can provide efficient and exact solutions to reliability analysis
of large and complex systems. The book provides both basic concepts and
detailed algorithms for modelling and evaluating reliability of a wide
range of complex systems, such as multi-state systems, phased-mission
systems, fault-tolerant systems with imperfect fault coverage, systems
with common-cause failures, systems with disjoint failures, and systems
with functional dependent failures. These types of systems abound in
safety-critical or mission-critical applications such as aerospace,
circuits, power systems, medical systems, telecommunication systems,
transmission systems, traffic light systems, data storage systems, and
etc.
The book provides both small-scale illustrative examples and large-scale
benchmark examples to demonstrate broad applications and advantages of
different decision diagrams based methods for complex system reliability
analysis. Other measures including component importance and failure
frequency are also covered. A rich set of references is cited in the
book, providing helpful resources for readers to pursue further research
and study of the topics. The target audience of the book is reliability
and safety engineers or researchers.
The book can serve as a textbook on system reliability analysis. It can
also serve as a tutorial and reference book on decision diagrams,
multi-state systems, phased-mission systems, and imperfect fault
coverage models.