An integrated reliability modeling environment

In this paper, we propose an integrated reliability/availability modeling a nd analysis environment suitable for heterogeneous hierarchical system anal ysis. A key component of this environment is a high level system specificat ion and input language which acts as a common interface to several off-the- shelf reliability modeling and analysis tools (Koren JM, Gaertner J. CAFTA: a fault tree analysis tool designed for PSA. In: Proc. of Probabilistic Sa fety Assessment and Risk Management: PSA '87, Zurich, Switzerland, vol. 2, 1987:588-592; Sahner RA, Trivedi KS. Reliability modeling using SHARPE, IEE E Trans. Reliability R-36, 2 June 1987:186-193; Ciardo G, Muppala J, Trived i K. SPNP: Stochastic Petri Net Package. In: Proc. 3rd Int. Workshop on Pet ri Nets and Performance Models, Kyoto, Japan, Dec. 1989:142-151; Smotherman MK, Dugan JB, Trivedi KS, Geist RM. The hybrid automated reliability predi ctor. AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics May/June 1986:319-331) . The complexity of the underlying solvers for reliability analysis is kept transparent to the user by the design of a common language and translators to these tools. This design has several advantages including interoperabil ity, ability of the interpreter to choose a particular solver depending on the problem characteristics. and the ease of enhancing the system capabilit y transparent to the user. The technique, being very compact in model descr iption, also leads to a quick analysis of the design, guiding the designers at every stage for reliable product development. (C) 1999 Published by Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.