Reliability Assessment of Distributed Control Systems with Network Structure

Distributed control systems with a network structure containing three levels of information transfer are considered. Such process control systems contain the console equipment of operators at the upper level, monitoring and control racks at the middle and remote terminals at the lower. The reliability models of three-level networks based on the model of restored systems with independent elements are also considered, a method for assessing reliability is proposed. The Monte Carlo method is used to estimate MTBF and failure probability with determination of the confidence interval. To conduct a computational experiment, the R software package is used. A description is given of the representation of the control system reliability model in the iGraph package, which provides visualization of the results. R language was primarily created and is continuing to evolve as a statistical data processing tool. One of R language undeniable advantages is the freeware open-source environment.