Probabilistic Evaluation of Prime Implicants and Top-Events for Non-Coherent Systems

This paper develops a rigorous method for obtaining 1) the existence probability (unavailability) and 2) the unconditional occurrence (failure) intensity (s-expected number of occurrences per unit time) for prime implicants and top-events of non-coherent systems. It is shown that repair and maintenance policies for non-coherent systems must be carefully formulated since, for example, component repair can lead to system failure.