Reliability of Parallel Systems

In section 2.4, page 43, it is suggested to model the reliability of a structural system by a series system of parallel systems. Each parallel system corresponds to a failure mode and this modelling is called systems modelling at level N, N = 1, 2, ... if all parallel systems have the same number N of failure elements. In chapter 6 it is shown how the most significant failure modes (parallel systems) can be identified by the β-unzipping method. After identification of significant (critical) failure modes (parallel systems) the next step is an estimate of the probability of failure $$ P_{f_P } $$ for each parallel system and the correlation between the parallel systems. The final step is the estimate of the probability of failure P_f of the series system of parallel systems by the methods discussed in chapter 3.