Complex high-technology devices are in growing use in industry, service sectors, and everyday life. Their reliability and maintenance is of utmost importance in view of their cost and critical functions. This book focuses on this theme and is intended to serve as a graduate-level textbook and reference book for scientists and academics in the field. The chapters are grouped into five complementary parts that cover the most important aspects of reliability and maintenance: stochastic models of reliability and maintenance, decision models involving optimal replacement and repair, stochastic methods in software engineering, computational methods and simulation, and maintenance management systems. This wide range of topics provides the reader with a complete picture in a self-contained volume.

Inhalt

Stochastic Models of Reliability and Maintenance: An Overview.- Fatigue Crack Growth.- Predictive Modeling for Fatigue Crack Propagation via Linearizing Time Transformations.- The Case for Probabilistic Physics of Failure.- Dynamic Modelling of Discrete Time Reliability Systems.- Reliability Analysis via Corrections.- Towards Rational Age-Based Failure Modelling.- Maintenance Policies for Multicomponent Systems: An Overview.- Complex Systems in Random Environments.- Optimal Replacement of Complex Devices.- A Framework for Single-Parameter Maintenance Activities and Its Use in Optimisation, Priority Setting and Combining.- Economics Oriented Maintenance Analysis and the Marginal Cost Approach.- Availability Analysis of Monotone Systems.- Optimal Replacement of Monotone Repairable Systems.- How to Determine Maintenance Frequencies for Multi-Component Systems? A General Approach.- A Probabilistic Model for Heterogeneous Populations and Related Burn-in Design Problems.- An Overview of Software Reliability Engineering.- The Operational Profile.- Assessing the Reliability of Software: An Overview.- The Role of Decision Analysis in Software Engineering.- Analysis of Software Failure Data.- Simulation: Runlength Selection and Variance Reduction Techniques.- Simulation: Sensitivity Analysis and Optimization Through Regression Analysis and Experimental Design.- Markov Dependability Models of Complex Systems: Analysis Techniques.- Bounded Relative Error in Estimating Transient Measures of Highly Dependable Non-Markovian Systems.- Maintenance Management System: Structure, Interfaces and Implementation.- PROMPT, A Decision Support System for Opportunity-Based Preventive Maintenance.- Maintenance Optimisation with the Delay Time Model.- List of Contributors.