Abstract:

Transient faults appear widely in various systems and lead to malfunctions. According to the mechanism of system failures resulted from them, transient faults can be classified into three types. Type I transient faults include those which lead immediately to system failures once their time duration exceeds some specified limit. Type II transient faults include those whose probabilities of leading to system failures are not associated with their time duration, but their occu-rrance moments. In this paper Type Ⅲ transient faults are discussed and the probability is computed, with which no system failure occurs due to them during the time interval （ 0 , t ）. Type Ⅲ transient faults imply that the relation between their time duration and probabilities, with which they result in a system failure, is governed by some distribution. The model presented in this paper to characterize type Ⅲ transient faults takes into account the transient fault not present state （FNP） and the transitions of transient fault not active state （FN） and transient fault active state （FA） to FNP. Because no Markovian property is assumed for the transitions among states, the model can be widely accepted.

Key words: transient fault, FNP, active state, state transition