Abstract
Functional dependence occurs when the failure of one component causes other components within the same system to become inaccessible or unusable. And, amongst the functional dependencies there can be the existence of loops. Traditional approaches to handling functional dependence loops are based on Markov models, which are inefficient due to the well-known state space explosion problem. In this paper we propose a new and efficient analytical approach to handling functional dependence loops in the system reliability analysis. Based on the divide-and-conquer strategy, the approach transforms a system with functional dependence loops into subsystems without dependence or loops, which can then be evaluated using efficient combinatorial approaches. The proposed approach is applicable to analyzing systems with components having general time-to-failure distributions. The basics and advantages of the proposed approach are illustrated through a detailed analysis of an example.