Development of a software tool for reliability estimation

This thesis presents Version 2.0 of Software Tool for Reliability Estimation (STORE 2.0). It expands on the work done by Parekh [1] by revising the algorithm for tie-set and cut-set calculation, by including fault tree reliability analysis, by analyzing state dependent system, and by integrating component and system reliability analysis.;This thesis also presents an approach to the simplification of complex systems by collapsing series and parallel components into a sub-system. The approach was illustrated on an example described by Nelson et al. [2]. The example had 16 components resulting in ten cut-sets and fifty five tie-sets. Upon simplification, the problem was reduced to one tie-set only.;STORE 2.0 integrates parameter estimation, component reliability analysis, system reliability analysis, estimation of reliability of state dependent systems, and fault tree analysis. It was verified and validated on several examples taken from the open literature. The software was developed in Visual Basic 2008 with SQL as the database