A standard procedure for the prediction of system availability as utilized in system effectiveness evaluations

Abstract

This project accomplishes the basic and applied research concerning the prediction of system availability so that a handbook of system availability model solutions and techniques for the estimation, allocation and optimization of the system availability functions can be developed. The handbook approach presented has the capability of being understood and used by persons who may not have the technical knowledge required to calculate an availability value using the techniques presently available. To accomplish this goal, the author substantiates the need for a handbook of this type, translates the theory and the methods from other fields to the research area and derives the missing theory, definitions and techniques to complete the background for the handbook development. Rather than defining totally new system effectiveness measures, this research reinforces the definitions of some terms and modifies other terms to remove ambiguities. Workable definitions are given for: system effectiveness; true, apparent, pointwise, interval and steady state availability; conditional reliability; and conditional performance. A rationale is provided for determining which of these measures should be used for specific situations to properly measure the system performance. The oscillations of the availability functions are discussed and several methods are derived for obtaining a rapid prediction of each system availability function. ...