A continuous approximation for evaluating reliability of complex systems under stress-strength model.

Evaluation of system reliability for complex systems based on Taylor's approximation becomes increasingly intractable. Taguchi's concept of random experimentation has been exploited by English et al (1996) for discretization of complex systems and determination of reliability values. We indicate a few demerits of discretization method and propose to retain the continuous character of the original problem by evaluating system reliability using a range approximation method. Our proposed method works better than discretization approach in all the three engineering problems considered for the purpose of demonstration.