Review published in IJPE, Vol. 7, No.4, July 2011, page 400
The book consists of the following 11 chapters followed by a Foreword and Authors’ Preface:
Foreword by the Series Editor: Hoang Pham
01 Page
Preface
02 Pages
Chapter 1
Introduction
13 Pages
Chapter 2
Basic Reliability Mathematics
56 Pages
Chapter 3
System Reliability Modelling
98 Pages
Chapter 4
Electronic System Reliability
23 Pages
Chapter 5
Software Reliability
36 Pages
Chapter 6
Mechanical Reliability
38 Pages
Chapter 7
Structural Reliability
37 Pages
Chapter 8
Power System Reliability
17 Pages
Chapter 9
Probabilistic Safety Assessment
47 Pages
Chapter 10
Applications of Probabilistic Safety Assessment
64 Pages
Chapter 11
Uncertainty Management in Reliability/Safety Assessment
88 Pages
Appendix: Distribution Tables
08 Pages
Index
07 Pages
As indicated in the foreword of the Series Editor Huang Pham, this is a good source book on the theoretical foundation of the fundamentals of reliability, availability and safety. In fact it gives reviewer pleasure in reviewing this book whose two authors (Verma and Rao) out of the three authors have been his students at Reliability Engineering Centre at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where they did their doctoral and postgraduate degree in reliability, respectively. There are several excellent books available on the subject of reliability and safety but dealing in a unified way is the principal merit of this book. This is all the more desirable and necessary as the much of the methodology used in these two areas is common. This book does full justice to this aspect by discussing them explicitly. Another plus point of the book appears to be its discussion of uncertainty measures in evaluating reliability, availability, risk or safety. The present book covers these aspects as well. The treatment of mechanical systems and structural reliability of course could have been presented in a unified way since both use probabilistic approach for design. But this does not restrict the book’s utility and the reviewer finds separate an adequate coverage of these systems in this book. As modern complex system operation is both hardware and software dependent, the book also covers software reliability as well. This reviewer would like to recommend this book as an introductory text for undergraduate as well as graduate students. The book treats a variety of problems in uncertainty consideration including load uncertainty and structural variability/imperfections. The simple language used in the book and the numerical examples provided shall make this book a good source of learning for under graduate students.
Krishna B. Misra
This review is published in Vol. 7, No. 4, July 2011
Reliability Engineering Centre at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where they did their doctoral and postgraduate degree in reliability, respectively. There are several excellent books available on the subject of reliability and safety but dealing in a unified way is the principal merit of this book. This is all the more desirable and necessary as the much of the methodology used in these two areas is common. This book does full justice to this aspect by discussing them explicitly. Another plus point of the book appears to be its discussion of uncertainty measures in evaluating reliability, availability, risk or safety. The present book covers these aspects as well. The treatment of mechanical systems and structural reliability of course could have been presented in a unified way since both use probabilistic approach for design. But this does not restrict the book’s utility and the reviewer finds separate an adequate coverage of these systems in this book. As modern complex system operation is both hardware and software dependent, the book also covers software reliability as well. This reviewer would like to recommend this book as an introductory text for undergraduate as well as graduate students. The book treats a variety of problems in uncertainty consideration including load uncertainty and structural variability/imperfections. The simple language used in the book and the numerical examples provided shall make this book a good source of learning for under graduate students.