A system state transition sampling method for composite system reliability evaluation

The authors present a new Monte Carlo simulation technique for composite system reliability evaluation. The method is based on a system state transition sampling approach which can be used to calculate an actual frequency index without requiring an additional enumeration procedure and the associated approximate assumptions. The approach presented does not require sampling the up and down component cycles and storing chronological information of system states. Generating unit derated states can also be easily included without additional calculations. The effectiveness of the method presented is demonstrated by application to the IEEE Reliability Test System. A comparison study between a state sampling based technique and the proposed method is presented using the IEEE Reliability Test System