Patent ID: 9348720
Filing Date: 2016-05-24
CPC Classification: G05B,G06F

Claim Text:
1. A method for testing the reliability of a system, the method comprising: establishing a system hierarchy of several levels by identifying components of the system; identifying and assigning failure modes to the components of the system; determining test procedures for failure modes of different components to obtain estimates for an availability of the component and selecting a first test; identifying a hierarchical level for allocating availability targets to the components, and establishing a hierarchical decomposition of the system; allocating availability targets to the identified components by qualitative methods considering experience, criticality of failures and novelty of design or material, the availability targets combined resulting in an overall availability target of the system, and identifying those targets which need to be analyzed; calculating a projected availability of all components, having targets which need to be analyzed, which is an estimate of the most probable value of availability provided that the tests are successful; identifying components for which availability targets are not met by the projected availability targets and select a second test to improve projected availability or increase severity of tests already selected until the availability targets are met; and then calculating an overall availability of the system, wherein, after having allocated the availability targets, calculating a demonstrable availability representing a lower boundary of an availability at a certain confidence level provided that the tests are successful, and deriving the projected availability from the demonstrable availability.