SHASYS - A Software Package for Component and System Reliability Analysis

The reliability analysis package SHASYS is a tool to compute an estimate of the probability of failure of a component or a system. It can be used for any component whose failure criterion is defined as a function of independent ran­dom variables with specified distributions. It can also be used for any system whose components satisfy the above criteria and system failure is defined in terms of failure of its components.

The package is interactive and allows the user flexibility in defining systems and components and in modifying their characteristics online. The package also includes the option of performing the reliability analysis based on commands stored in a file. This option is especially useful for repeating analysis of similar problems and in parametric studies.

The analysis techniques used for computing the reliability of components are based on first-order and second-order reliability methods while the techniques used for computing the reliability of systems are based on a first-order approximation to the multinormal integral. The actual subroutines used in the reliability computations, i.e., sorml and sysrel, were developed at the Technical University of Munich under Dr. Rudiger Rackwitz. The contribution of SHASYS is to facilitate use and application of these basic tools.