Reliable Systems with Unreliable Components

Dr. John Steele

Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio

February 19, 1999

Abstract

In the case of series and parallel structures we may use limiting distributions to approximate probabilities associated with reliability. In this talk, I shall generalize some of the notions used in determining limiting distributions to other structures beyond the series and parallel cases. It can be shown that unique analytic family of one parameter limiting distributions can be associated with many coherent structures. In the case of a series structure the family is the familiar family of one parameter exponential distributions. Along the way to these results, interesting observations concerning coherent structures and their related reliability polynomials will be highlighted.