Summary

Analysis of reliability and risk is an important and integral part of planning, construction and operation of all technical systems. To be able to perform such analyses systematically and scientifically, there is usually a need for special methods and models. This book presents the most important of these. Particular emphasis has been placed on the ideas and the motivation for the use of the various methods and models. It has been an objective to compile a book which provides practising engineers and engineering graduates with the concepts and basic techniques for evaluating reliability and risk. It is hoped that the material presented will make them so familiar with the subject that they can carry out various types of analyses themselves and understand and make use of the more detailed applications and additional material which is available in the journals and publications associated with their own discipline. It has also been an objective to put reliability and risk analyses in context - how such analyses should be used in design and operation of components and systems. The material presented is modern and a large part of the book is at research level. The book focuses on analysis of repairable systems, not only non-repairable systems which have traditionally been given most attention in textbooks on reliability theory. Since most real-life systems are repairable, methods for analysing repairable systems are an important area of research. The book presents general methods, with most applications taken from offshore petro leum activities."