Reliability bounds for coherent structures with independent components

In this article a minimal path upper bound and a minimal cut lower bound on the reliability of a coherent system are derived for the case of independent (but not necessarily identical) components. Coupling these bounds with the classical Esary and Proschan's (1963) bounds, some limit theorems are established for the reliability of large coherent systems under quite general conditions.Reliability bounds Cut sets Path sets Limit theorems