SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS IN FUZZY RELIABILITY ANALYSISA

In this paper the failure possibility and the error possibility are used to represent reliability of a technical component and that of a human operator, respectively. The failure possibility and the error possibility are fuzzy sets on the interval [0,1]. In a man-machine system, reliability of the technical component and that of the human operator are usually affected by many factors, e.g., the environment in which a machine is operated, psychological stress of the human operator, etc. The possibility is derived from not only the failure or the error rate but also estimates of these factors. The fuzzy reasoning plays an important role in the derivation. The reliability analysis is performed by the use of the possibility obtained by the present method. Moreover this paper discusses the sensitivity analysis which evaluates what extent the change of the estimation of each factor has an influence on reliability of a man-machine system. The important factors to be ameliorated are shown through the sensitivity analysis.