The reliability and safety analysis is a valuable tool for the system and design engineer in predicting the long term operating behavior of complex systems. Due to the wide variety of safety and reliability re¬ quirements emerging when technical systems are applied in various fields, a wide spectrum of reliability problems exists. A problem-independent concept yielding an efficient method for a reliabil¬ ity or safety analysis and for optimizing system performance in terms of reliability and

more »

... ety has been developed here. An efficient, easily applicable and flexible computer program system for the estimation of the reliability characteristics for evaluating a system's long-term performance has also been developed. The computer program modules are based on a selection of generally applicable math¬ ematical reliability models, some newly developed. The numerical evalua¬ tion of the various mathematical models is done analytically or by Monte Carlo Simulation. The mathematical models were selected in order to cover such system qualities as repairable and non-repairable structures, independent and dependent components; exponential and time dependent fail¬ ure and repair distributions and components which are influenced by inde¬ pendent events occurring in the environment of the system. The newly developed concept and program have been used for safety and re¬ liability analysis of some large, complex systems in the planning or design phases, where the advantages of the method and the efficiency of the aids became obvious. -