NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF SYSTEM AVAILABILITY AND OF PARAMETER ESTIMATION METHODS

This document describes two problem areas concerning systems subject to periodic checkout, which were investigated with the aid of a computer. The first part Parameter Estimation summarizes the results of a Monte Carlo analysis to determine the feasibility and accuracy of measuring system failure rates, checkout error probabilities, and repair effectiveness from the numbers of systems passing and failing in three consecutive checkouts. The second part Availability Analysis describes, mainly through a series of graphs, the quantitative variation of system availability with a number of operational and maintenance parameters representing time durations of standby, checkout, and repair, failure rates during standby and checkout, repair effectiveness, decision errors during checkout, and test coverage.