Bayesian reliability modeling of multi-level system with interdependent subsystems and components

Modeling the reliability of multi-level engineering systems is critically important yet technically challenging. Existing methods have limited consideration of the failure interdependency caused by the interactions among subsystems and components. In this paper, a new Bayesian Network (BN) representation of system structure and component interactions is proposed. Based on the BN representation, a Bayesian framework is developed to fuse the information from different levels of a system for modeling the reliability of the components, subsystems and the system as a whole. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.