An integrated reliability modeling environment

In this paper, we propose an integrated reliability/availability modeling and analysis environment suitable for heterogeneous hierarchical system analysis. A key component of this environment is a high level system specification 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 Safety Assessment and Risk Management: PSA ʹ87, Zurich, Switzerland, vol. 2, 1987:588–592; Sahner RA, Trivedi KS. Reliability modeling using SHARPE, IEEE Trans. Reliability R-36, 2 June 1987:186–193; Ciardo G, Muppala J, Trivedi K. SPNP: Stochastic Petri Net Package. In: Proc. 3rd Int. Workshop on Petri Nets and Performance Models, Kyoto, Japan, Dec. 1989:142–151; Smotherman MK, Dugan JB, Trivedi KS, Geist RM. The hybrid automated reliability predictor. 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 interoperability, ability of the interpreter to choose a particular solver depending on the problem characteristics and the ease of enhancing the system capability transparent to the user. The technique, being very compact in model description, also leads to a quick analysis of the design, guiding the designers at every stage for reliable product development.