Evidential network is considered to have superiority in conducting reliability analysis for complex engineering systems with epistemic uncertainty. However, existing methods tend to result in combinational explosion when multistate systems are involved in the reliability analysis, which means the reliability analysis cost increases exponentially with the number of components and that of functioning states. Therefore, an enhanced reliability analysis method is proposed in this paper for reliability analysis and performance evaluation of multistate systems with epistemic uncertainty, through which the combination explosion can be significantly alleviated. Firstly, the functioning states of each component are sequenced according to utility functions. Secondly, the basic belief assignment (BBA) of each component is reassigned in terms of commonality function, through which the BBA defined in the power set space is represented by two extreme BBA distributions defined in the frame of discernment. Thirdly, the reliability intervals of the system states are calculated through evidential network, and the system performance level is computed. Two multistate system numerical examples are investigated to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

中文翻译：

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基于证据网络的不确定状态多态系统可靠性分析方法的改进

证据网络在具有不确定性的复杂工程系统的可靠性分析中具有优势。然而，当多状态系统参与可靠性分析时，现有方法往往会导致组合爆炸，这意味着可靠性分析成本随着组件数量和功能状态数量的增加而成倍增加。因此，本文提出了一种改进的可靠性分析方法，用于具有不确定性的多状态系统的可靠性分析和性能评估，从而可以显着减轻组合爆炸的发生。首先，根据效用函数对每个组件的功能状态进行排序。其次，每个组件的基本置信度分配（BBA）根据通用性函数进行重新分配，通过此函数，在功率集空间中定义的BBA由在识别框架中定义的两个极端BBA分布表示。第三，通过证据网络计算系统状态的可靠性区间，并计算系统性能水平。研究了两个多状态系统的数值例子，以证明该方法的有效性和效率。