Analysis of Pseudo-Reliability of a Combat Tank System and its Optimal Design

The effectiveness of an actual combat tank system is analyzed. A measure of effectiveness (called pseudo-reliability) which is the reliability of a system weighted by the relative-performance is introduced. It appears to be a more practical measure of the system effectiveness than reliability whenever the level of performance is of primary concern as is the case for the combat tank system. A model is used to optimize the design of the system in which the system pseudo-reliability is maximized subject to a cost constraint. This model involves nonlinear programming and is solved by the sequential unconstrained minimization technique (SUMT). A numerical example with actual data from the test evaluation of five combat tanks illustrates the model.