Citation

Evans MGK, Parry GW, Wreathall J. Reliab. Eng. 1984; 9(2): 107-115.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(84)90044-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper discusses the problem of the quantitative treatment of common-cause failures in systems analysis. Two popular models for common-cause failures are discussed in relation to the data available for estimating the model parameters. It is pointed out that an important data base generally available is incomplete in that the data sampling scheme is not specified. A method for estimating a common-cause parameter for a simple-parametric model is described. The method relies on making judgements about the potential of particular failure mechanisms for causing multiple failures on a case by case basis, rather than making assumptions about the sampling scheme as is done in the methods discussed previously.