Mechanical Reliability of a point system

We study the reliability of a point system by means of the reliability of each mechanical component. The latter's reliability is characterised by means of the failure probability estimated with a strength – stress method. Thus the reliability of the point system is defined by its failure rate which is the product of a basic failure rate by the sum of the failure probabilities of the mechanical components. The final result is very conveniently obtained from an Excel routine which has, as parameters, the number of trains and the number of moves of the point system over a particular time period. In this way the reliability of the same point system in several mission profiles can be assessed.