Failure rates for general systems including structural components

At present, the methods of analysis of the reliability of man-machine-structure systems appear inconsistent and difficult, particularly if both the results from a classical and from the structural analysis have to be combined. It is shown that the unconditional failure rates in classical reliability theory have the same meaning as the outcrossing rates in structural reliability so that both approaches can be unified. Some practically important cases of systems, i.e. systems under the excitation of stationary Gaussian vector processes, are studied in more detail.