Identifying the Presence of Destructive Interaction in Systems

Two basic questions for aerospace reliability engineers are: a) are component failure rates estimated from systems tests coming from the same population of rates as those obtained when the components were not functioning in the "total systems" environment, and; b) if the populations are different, what are the phenomena whose presence are altering the population and how can they be operationally controlled? In this paper the concept of destructive interaction as a stochastic process is introduced. A method is developed for concluding whether or not it is reasonable to suppose that destructive interaction is present in a functioning system and to estimate the intensity of the process. A procedure for incorporating interaction processes into system simulations is then discussed. The relationship between interaction processes and the independence assumption of component operation is analyzed.