Analysing the failure behaviour of electronic circuits and equipment with safety responsibility

The author discusses methods of reliability analysis of permanently-wired electronic systems. Since such systems are almost exclusivly concerned with signalling security, reliability analyses are mostly required in the switching circuit systems and not so much on the system level.For this reason, the article deals only with reliability analyses on electronic subassemblies and the more complex components (integrated circuits). Of the various methods of analysis, the failure-effect anlysis is dealt with in the greatest detail since it is almost always applicable and also gives the most complete results. (orig./RW)