Automated generation of a reliability model for a system undertaking phased missions

There are various mathematical models available to assess the reliability of a given system, these models relate the performance of the system to the performance of the components of which it is comprised and can be used to determine the failure probability or failure frequency of the system in question. Currently there is software available to perform the mathematical analysis of the model but its construction, which is used as input to the software, is undertaken manually. This is quite a lengthy process and can limit the usefulness of the model. One way of improving this situation would be to automate the construction process. In this work a procedure is developed to automatically generate a reliability model, based upon Petri Nets, for a system undertaking a phased mission.