Neural Network based Reliability Prediction

[csasun]

I heard and reading a lot about the power of ANN. It is a hot research topic in many engineering applications.

For Reliability prediction, is ANN being viewed as a good alternative to Probabilitic / Stochastic methods?

Any views or success stories that can be shared, please?
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Sasun

[Pantelis]

We (at ReliaSoft) experimented with them back in the 90's for reliability analysis. At that time the consensus was that this was not a "better” alternative.

[csasun]

May I know somemore info. to understand the reasons? As I am given to understand that with the advent of Fuzzy Logic Circuits, things are a lot different with ANN.

I am specifically asking these questions because, for the last few months we started experimenting with ANN and found it to be very fascinating {'fatigue life predictions'}. That has triggered in my mind as to why this should not be tried out for more complex situations like: Product reliability predictions....
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Sasun