Sequential Testing of Components for System Reliability

It is often desirable to construct s-confidence limits for system reliability on the basis of data obtained from `pass-fail´ tests on the components of the system. This paper presents a general method for sequentially testing the components that provides data from which these s-confidence limits can be easily derived. The method is applicable to any s-coherent system for which the reliability function is known. It is a generalization of a scheme given by Winterbottom and Verrall for systems composed of units arranged either in series or parallel.