Reliability and Safety Engineering

Reliability and safety are core issues that must be addressed throughout the life cycle of engineering systems. Reliability and Safety Engineering presents an overview of the basic concepts, together with simple and practical illustrations. The authors present reliability terminology in various engineering fields, viz., • electronics engineering, • software engineering, • mechanical engineering, • structural engineering, and • power systems engineering. They describe the latest applications in the area of probabilistic safety assessment, such as technical specification optimization, risk monitoring and risk informed in-service inspection. Reliability and safety studies must, inevitably, deal with uncertainty, so the book includes uncertainty propagation methods: Monte Carlo simulation, fuzzy arithmetic, Dempster-Shafer theory and probability bounds. Reliability and Safety Engineering also highlights advances in system reliability and safety assessment including dynamic system modeling and uncertainty management. Case studies from typical nuclear power plants, as well as from structural, software, and electronic systems are also discussed. Reliability and Safety Engineering combines discussions of the existing literature on basic concepts and applications with state-of-the-art methods used in reliability and risk assessment of engineering systems. It is designed to assist practicing engineers, students and researchers in the areas of reliability engineering and risk analysis. Front Matter....Pages i-xix Introduction....Pages 1-13 Basic Reliability Mathematics....Pages 15-70 System Reliability Modeling....Pages 71-168 Electronic System Reliability....Pages 169-191 Software Reliability....Pages 193-228 Mechanical Reliability....Pages 229-266 Structural Reliability....Pages 267-303 Power System Reliability....Pages 305-321 Probabilistic Safety Assessment....Pages 323-369 Applications of Probabilistic Safety Assessment....Pages 371-434 Uncertainty Management in Reliability/Safety Assessment....Pages 435-522 Back Matter....Pages 523-535