Continuous-state system-reliability: an interpolation approach

Reliability theory has grown from binary-state systems to multi-state and continuous-state systems. However, structure functions for continuous systems cannot always be specified via a finite set of boundary points (minimal-paths and minimal-cuts in the binary case) as they can for discrete systems. The authors propose a process by which a structure function for a continuous system is built with limited input. This method is based upon scattered-data interpolation (SDI) to input data provided by the customer. The SDI technique is the Hardy multiquadric method. Guidance is given on appropriate choices for multiquadric parameters, and comparisons are made between SDI results and theoretical results for several continuous-model structure functions. The topic of how statistical-coherence can be assured in the resulting interpolation is explored.