Reliability Fundamentals

The development of modern technologies has enlarged the scope of quality, to include aspects concerning the time varying performances of systems. The general property of a system, to conserve its performance in time, is known as reliability. The concept of reliability, developed on the basis of electronic technology, can be generalized to describe any system, be it technical, biological or even social. This work is concerned with technological systems, but many of its ideas can be applied successfully outside the purely technical field. A comprehensive treatment of the various models and methodologies employed in the reliability field is given. The mathematical, physical and engineering concepts related to reliability are presented from a unitary point of view. Moreover, the book provides the theoretical background for the methodologies of reliability assurance and assessment. A global model of system reliability is specified by classical estimation of its parameters from experimental data. The practical difficulties related to the amount of data needed for an accurate estimation is examined in detail