A failure polymorphism theory for system reliability modeling considering failure mechanisms correlativity

There is a 'polymorphism' phenomenon in biology, which means individuals evolve to two or more clearly different phenotypes in the same population of a species, as a result of internal species gene and external environment condition. A similar 'failure polymorphism' phenomenon exists in complex systems. The failure modes in a complex system originate from different failure mechanisms. Failure mechanism is the root cause of product failure, and experts are used to paying attention to failure dependence problem by studying the failure behavior, few researches is conducted from the failure mechanisms correlation perspective. In this paper, polymorphism related concepts are incorporated into reliability field, new definitions of failure polymorphism are discussed, and Bayesian framework is introduced to tackle the problems of uncertainty factors and dynamic evaluation. Based on physics of failure (PoF), the paper presents a system-level reliability evaluation method considering the mechanisms correlativity.