Reliability evaluation of a limited-flow network in terms of minimal cutsets

Many systems can be regarded as flow networks whose arcs have discrete and multi-valued random capacities. The probability of the maximum flow at each various level and the reliability of such a flow network can be calculated in terms of K-lattices which are generated from each subset of the family of all MCs (minimal cutsets). However the size of such a family 2^m-1 (m=number of MCs) grows exponentially with m. Such a flow network can be considered as a multistate system with multistate components so that its reliability can be evaluated in terms of upper boundary points of each level d (named d-MCs here). This work presents an algorithm to generate all d-MCs from each MC for each system capacity level d. The new algorithm is analyzed and compared with the algorithm given by J. Xue (1985). Examples show how all d-MCs are generated; the reliability of one example is computed