Model-based dynamic reliability engineering for hybrid electric vehicle design

The paper analyzes the tradeoff between battery life and functional reliability for a hybrid electrical vehicle design study. Reliability of complex technical systems often depends on their dynamic behavior. Petri nets have significant advantages over classic static models of reliable systems in describing such systems, and an international standard IEC 62551 has been published recently (Analysis techniques for dependability - Petri net techniques). Simulation is the only possible method to derive reliability results for realistic systems that have a large state space or are not Markovian (memoryless). The paper shows how the very long run times for highly reliable systems can be sped up significantly by using the RESTART-method for stochastic Petri nets and its implementation in the TimeNET software tool.