Estimation of System Survival Reliability in a Radiation Environment Based on the Available Radiation Data at Component Level

Abstract

The need to qualify systems for high radiation levels for accelerator or space environment has led to the development of a new approach based on reliability concepts. Conventional qualification approaches provide conservative radiation designs without the ability to estimate the system survival reliabilities beyond the required radiation hardness. In this work, an approach is described to estimate system survival reliabilities against radiation-induced failures based on component radiation response. For this purpose, models and methods are proposed to estimate the single component survival reliability against the different kinds of radiation-induced failures. A feasibility study of the use of such an approach for qualification purpose is presented with a demonstration of survival reliability estimation of a case-study system.