Reliability assessment of systems with dependent degradation processes based on Piecewise-Deterministic Markov process

This chapter presents a reliability assessment framework for multi-component systems whose degradation processes are modeled by multi-state and physics-based models. The piecewise-deterministic Markov process modeling approach is employed to treat dependencies between the degradation processes within one component or/and among components. The proposed method can handle the dependencies between physics-based models, between multi-state models and between these two types of models. A Monte Carlo simulation algorithm is designed to compute the systems reliability. A case study on one subsystem of the residual heat removal system of a nuclear power plant is illustrated as exemplification of the proposed modeling framework.