A Model-Based method for System Reliability Analysis

System reliability is an important non-functional requirement whose satisfaction is even crucial for mission critical systems. However, the increase in both system complexity and accuracy required in the reliability analyses often makes inadequate traditional techniques which are mainly based on statistical and probabilistic tools and on the hierarchical decomposition of the system in terms of its components. Moreover, the integration of classical techniques in typical system development processes, and especially in the design phases, is quite difficult and thus their use is often postponed to the later development stages (e.g. system verification) with the possible risk of having to revise even basic design choices and with a consequent increase in both completion time and development cost. To address these issues, the paper proposes a Model-Based method for system reliability analysis which combines in a unified framework the benefits of popular OMG modeling languages (UML, SysML) with the wide adopted Mathworks simulation and analysis environments (Matlab, Simulink). The flexibility and scalability of the proposal, as well as its effectiveness in evaluating through simulation the system reliability performances, is exemplified through a case study concerning the reliability analysis of a Flight Management System.