System reliability assessment with an approximate reasoning model

Conference · Thu Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1998

OSTI ID:303958

Eisenhawer, S W; Bott, T F; Helm, T M; Boerigter, S T

The projected service life of weapons in the US nuclear stockpile will exceed the original design life of their critical components. Interim metrics are needed to describe weapon states for use in simulation models of the nuclear weapons complex. The authors present an approach to this problem based upon the theory of approximate reasoning (AR) that allows meaningful assessments to be made in an environment where reliability models are incomplete. AR models are designed to emulate the inference process used by subject matter experts. The emulation is based upon a formal logic structure that relates evidence about components. This evidence is translated using natural language expressions into linguistic variables that describe membership in fuzzy sets. The authors introduce a metric that measures the acceptability of a weapon to nuclear deterrence planners. Implication rule bases are used to draw a series of forward chaining inferences about the acceptability of components, subsystems and individual weapons. They describe each component in the AR model in some detail and illustrate its behavior with a small example. The integration of the acceptability metric into a prototype model to simulate the weapons complex is also described.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., Technology and Safety Assessment Div., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 303958
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--98-2453; CONF-980965--; ON: DE99001236
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
FUZZY LOGIC
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
RELIABILITY
SERVICE LIFE