Abstract
For the reliability analysis of systems with dynamic behavior of functional dependence, state space oriented approaches, in particular, Markov model based methods have been used for the entire system or at least dynamic portions of the system via a modular approach. Unfortunately, Markov models suffer from the well-known state explosion problem, leading to models that are computationally intensive and intractable. In this short communication, a combinatorial transform method is proposed for the reliability analysis of dynamic systems subject to functional dependencies. The method can obviate the use of Markov models, offering exact and computationally efficient solutions to the reliability analysis of large-scale dynamic systems. In addition, the proposed method will not be restricted to exponential time-to-failure distributions. The basics and advantages of the proposed approach are illustrated through an example. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]