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Basic reliability cookbook

Serial Reliability

Serial reliability is used when each element must be functional for the combination to be useful.  Given a set of elements (not necessarily identical), the reliability of the combination is the product of the individual reliabilities of the elements.

Elements E1, E2, … EN have individual reliability P1, P2 … PN.  The combined reliability of the elements is P1 * P2 * … * PN.

For example, E1 has reliability 0.9, E2 has reliability 0.85 and E3 has reliability 0.95.  The serial reliability of a system composed of E1, E2 and E3 is 0.90 * 0.85 * 0.95 = 0.72675.

In the special case where all of the elements are identical, the serial reliability of N elements with reliability P is PN.  For example, five identical elements with reliability 0.8 have a combined serial reliability of 0.32768.

The reliability of a system composed of serial elements is always less than or equal to the reliability of the least reliable element.

 

Failure Rate | Serial Reliability | Parallel Reliability | K of N Reliability | Standby Reliability | Duty Cycle Reliability

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