An Efficient Method for Reliability Evaluation of a General Network

This paper presents a method for finding the terminal-pair reliability expression of a general network. First, the system success function S is found, beginning from the connection matrix for the logic diagram of the network. Second, using the concept of Exclusive operator, S is changed to its equivalent S (disjoint) form, and the reliability expression has been derived. The method has the advantage of not requiring step by step testing for disjointness. Examples illustrate the method.