The research discusses interrelationship of structural and reliability importance measures which used in the probabilistic safety assessment. The most frequently used component importance measures, such as Birnbaum's Importance (BI), Risk Reduction (RR), Risk Reduction Worth (RRW), RA (Risk Achievement), Risk Achievement Worth (RAW), Fussel Vesely (FV) and Critically Importance (CI) can be derived from two structure importance measures that are developed based on the size and the number of Minimal Path Set (MPS) and Minimal Cut Set (MCS). In order to show an effectiveness of importance measures which is developed in this paper, the three representative functional structures, such as series-parallel, k out of n and bridge are used to compare with Birnbaum's Importance measure. In addition, the study presents the implementation examples of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) metrics and alternating renewal process models with exponential distribution to calculate the availability and unavailability of component facility for improving system performances. System state structure functions in terms of component states can be converted into the system availability (unavailability) functions by substituting the component reliabilities (unavailabilities) for the component states. The applicable examples are presented in order to help the understanding of practitioners.

The research proposes seven elimination rules of redundant gates and blocks in Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Reliability Block Diagram (RBD). The computational complexity of cut sets and path sets is NP-hard. In order to reduce the complexity of Minimal Cut Set (MCS) and Minimal Path Set (MPS), the paper classifies generation algorithms. Moreover, the study develops six implementation steps which reflect structural importance (SI) and reliability importance (RI) from Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) that a priority of using the functional logic among components is to reduce (improve) the system unavailability (or availability). The proposed steps include efficient generation of state structure function by Rare Event Enumeration (REA). Effective use of importance measures, such as SI and ill measures, is presented based on the number and the size of MCS and MPS which is generated from the reference[5] of this paper. In addition, numerical examples are presented for practitioners to obtain the comprehensive understanding of six steps that is proposed in this research.

본 논문은 교량구조의 체계신뢰도를 추정하기 위한 효율적인 중요도 표본추출기법의 개발을 목적으로 한다. 기존의 체계신뢰성 해석을 위한 방법은 1차 모멘트법, 2차 모멘트법, AFOSM 근사해법, 그리고 시뮬레이션 방법등이 있다. 중요도 표본추출기법은 아주 적은 경비와 노력으로 정확한 해를 구하는 시뮬레이션 방법이다. 적용 예를 통하여 중요도 표본추출기법은 교량구조의 체계신뢰성해석에 아주 효과적인 방법임을 알 수 있었다.