ABSTRACT
The reliability of an engineering system can be defined as its ability to fulfill its design purpose, defined as performance requirements for some time period and environmental conditions. The theory of probability provides the fundamental bases by which to measure this ability and for the development of reliability and hazard functions. The reliability assessment methods can be based on analytical strength-and-load performance functions or empirical life data and can be used to compute the reliability for a given set of conditions that are time invariant or a time-dependent reliability. For qualitative and/or preliminary risk analysis, reliability data reported in the literature for similar systems can be used as discussed in Chapter 8.
