Modeling and simulation for system reliability analysis: The RAMSAS method

Abstract

The paper presents the up-to-date version of RAMSAS, a recently proposed model-based method for the reliability analysis of systems through simulation. RAMSAS can be easy plugged in various phases of a typical system development process ranging from the design to the testing phases so to complement other well-known and wide adopted techniques for system reliability analysis (e. g. FMECA, FTA, RBD) by providing additional analysis capabilities. The present version of RAMSAS is the result of an intensive experimentation phase in several application domains (avionics, automotive, satellite) which allowed improving the effectiveness of the method especially in the modeling of both the intended and dysfunctional system behavior. The paper concludes with a discussion about the specific aspects of the reliability analysis of System of Systems (SoS), and how RAMSAS can be further extended to effectively support it.