Terminal-pair reliability using flow augmenting path search algorithm

This paper considers a reliability problem as a special type of flow problem and presents an algorithm to evaluate the exact 2-terminal reliability of networks by using a backtracking technique. It employs a polygon-to-chain reduction in addition to series and parallel reduction techniques to reduce execution time. In comparisons, it presents a much better performance than other algorithms known to us. We also propose a methodology to apply the algorithm for approximation of the system reliability.