Abstract:

For high reliability and long life systems, system pass/fail data are often rare. Integrating lower-level data, such as data drawn from the subsystem or component pass/fail testing, the Bayesian analysis can improve the precision of the system reliability assessment. If the multi-level pass/fail data are overlapping, one challenging problem for the Bayesian analysis is to develop a likelihood function. Since the computation burden of the existing methods makes them infeasible for multi-component systems, this paper proposes an improved Bayesian approach for the system reliability assessment in light of overlapping data. This approach includes three steps: fristly searching for feasible paths based on the binary decision diagram, then screening feasible points based on space partition and constraint decomposition, and finally simplifying the likelihood function. An example of a satellite rolling control system demonstrates the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed approach.

Key words: system reliability assessment, Bayesian analysis, limited samples, overlapping pass/fail data