An allocation scheme for estimating the reliability of a parallel-series system

TL;DR

This paper proposes a two-stage allocation scheme for estimating the reliability of parallel-series systems, optimizing test resource distribution and validating asymptotic optimality through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid two-stage design for reliability estimation of complex systems with unknown component reliabilities and fixed total testing resources.

Findings

Asymptotic optimality of the allocation scheme is systematically proved.

The scheme is validated through Monte Carlo simulations.

The method effectively estimates system reliability with limited testing resources.

Abstract

We give a hybrid two stage design which can be useful to estimate the reliability of a parallel-series and/or by duality a series-parallel system, when the component reliabilities are unknown as well as the total numbers of units allowed to be tested in each subsystem. When a total sample size is fixed large, asymptotic optimality is proved systematically and validated via Monte Carlo simulation.