Monte Carlo Analysis of System Tolerance

The effect on system performance of variation of the values of component parts is a topic which should be included in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. Two subroutines are presented in this paper which simplify the problem so that meaningful problems can be solved by the sophomore or junior engineering student. Values for system components are selected according to a probability density function and the resulting system performance is calculated. The resulting values of system performance are presented in the form of a histogram. The advantage here is that the student can very easily get a picture of the variation of a system perfonnance factor due to component variations.