Mechatronic System Reliability

[B Williams]

Hello all -

I am working in an R&D / design engineering capacity in the automotive industry. We are working in the conceptual design stage on a mechatronic (combination of electro-mechanical components and software controls). Does ReliaSoft or are there any other known methodologies that exist for estimating the reliability of systems that contain hardware, software, and have many other "system-level" interdependencies?

[RS Support]

I am not sure as the full context of the question so I am going to answer it in two ways:

If you are asking for a tool/methodology that without any (of your) data would give you general estimates for the reliability of your design -- then ReliaSoft does not supply any tools for this – nor do I feel confident to recommending any methods.

If you have some data and you can make some assumptions (where data is absent) then ReliaSoft’s tools are designed to address different aspects of this.
(For a tool index See http://www.reliasoft.com/products.htm )

As for theory and applications I would suggest that you take a look at the theoretical references (eTextbooks) on this site.

Having said that let me also point out that as of this posting the eTextbooks do not get into software reliability. When it comes to software it is in most cases reasonable to use the same probabilistic methods used for hardware.