Monte Carlo simulation of confidence intervals for reliability

A computer program which computes fiducial confidence intervals for reliability by Monte Carlo simulation has been written. The program has the capability of computing these intervals for general systems of series, parallel, and mixed series and parallel subsystems which have failure time distributions which are either exponential, Weibull, gamma, normal, or lognormal. Comparison of the simulation technique with a Bayesian technique for computing confidence intervals in the case of a series of exponentially distributed components shows that the two methods agree quite well when a fiducial prior distribution for reliability is used in the Bayesian technique. A uniform prior distribution gives results which are consistently lower than those obtained by simulation --Abstract, page ii