Fault-tolerant systems, capable of functioning properly even after sustaining certain component failures, are being used in an increasing variety of applications. Some of these applications are highly critical for safety or economic reasons and place a correspondingly high demand on system reliability. Since the reliability of such systems frequently cannot be determined adequately by conventional testing and simulation methods, various reliability modeling techniques have been developed to help assess the reliability levels actually achieved. Several of these techniques are discussed in the literature. This chapter describes another, more recently developed technique. CARE III (computer-aided reliability estimation, version three) is a computer program designed to help estimate the reliability of complex, redundant systems. Although the program can model a wide variety of redundant structures, it was developed specifically for fault-tolerant avionics systems - systems distinguished by the need for extremely reliable performance since a system failure could well result in the loss of human life. It is usually easy to design enough redundancy into a system to reduce to acceptably small levels the probability that it fails due to inadequate resources. The dominant cause of failure in ultrareliable systems thus tends to be due not to the exhaustion of resources but rather to the failure to detect and isolate a malfunctioning element before it has caused the system to take an erroneous action. Such failures are called coverage failures. CARE III differs from its predecessors in, among other things, the attention given to coverage failure mechanisms.


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    Title :

    Computer-aided reliability estimation


    Additional title:

    Rechnergestuetzte Zuverlaessigkeitsschaetzungen


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Prentice-Hall Publ. ; 2 ; 633-657


    Publication date :

    1986


    Size :

    25 Seiten, 7 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 12 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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