PREDICTING SOFTWARE RELIABILITY IN A FUZZY FIELD ENVIRONMENT
A. H. S. Garmabaki, Alireza Ahmadi, P. K. Kapur, Uday Kumar · International Journal of Reliability Quality and Safety Engineering · 2013
The testing-development phase has been carried out in a given control environment. However, the product will be used in different operating environment by different end-users, which is unknown to the developer. The operating environment may range from a very clean one up to a harsh environment. These uncertain operating environments will impact to the reliability and performance of the software which may differ from the testing phase reliability. We consider that the effect of environment on reliability has a fuzzy nature. The fuzzy effects of the field environments can be captured by a unit-free environmental factor. To overcome this problem, the fuzzy probabilistic theory may be used in the processing of stochastic parameters, taking into account their fuzzy nature. The proposed model is based on Weibull distribution. The aim of this paper is to introduce a fuzzy field environment (FFE) reliability model that covers both the testing and operating phases in the development cycle. Illustration examples of the proposed model have been validated on data collected from two industries.