390 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON RELIABILITY, VOL. R-32, NO.

4, OCTOBER 1983

Laboratory of Hitachi Ltd. and is engaged in the study of system plan- University in 1964. He is a senior researcher at the Systems Development
ning and system reliability. Laboratory of Hitachi Ltd. and is engaged in the study of system plan-
ning and reliability.
S. Shingai; Systems Development Laboratory; Hitachi Ltd.; 1099 Ohzenji
Asao-ku Kawasaki, 215, JAPAN. Manuscript TR82-76 received 1982 July 8; revised 1983 September 5.
Sadanori Shingai (M'81) was born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, on
1937 November 22. He received a BS degree in Technology from Kyoto

Correspondence.......... Correspondence items are not formally refereed.

Transformations: Delta-Star, Star-Delta and memory requirements [2]. The complex network of [3,
Quadrilateral - Star figure 10] with 33 branches and 21 nodes required CPU
time of only 1.2 seconds on a DEC-20 computer.
J.P. Gadani It required 23 delta-star and 11 star-delta transforma-
Lukhdhirji Engineering College, Morbi tions for simplification of the network. The probability of
failure between the terminal pair (1, 21) was found to be 2
x 10-1 assuming perfect nodes and branch failure prob-
Key Words-Transformation, Delta-star, Star-delta, Quadrilateral- abilities equal to 10-3. The results of larger networks are
star, Complex system reliability evaluation. given in [4]. This clearly indicates the effectiveness of
transformation techniques for analysing large complex
networks. Research workers should compare these tech-
In [1] a reader sought information about "any practical niques with other efficient reliability evaluation techniques
situations when the star-to-delta transformation is worth and show the results for comparative study.
doing". The networks shown in [5, figure 4b] and [3,
figure 2] are practical situations where the delta-star REFERENCES
transformation can not be employed and the star-delta
transformation should be restored to for network reduc- [1] D.L. Grosh, "Correspondence: star-delta transformations", IEEE
tion. Similarly for the situation of [3, figure 3] the delta- Trans. Reliability, vol R-31, 1982 Apr, p 98.
star and star-delta transformations are inadequate, [2] J.P. Gadani, "On some aspects of power system reliability
necessitating the quadrilateral-star transformation. neesi tanalysis", PhD Thesis submitted to University of Roorkee,
Roorkee, India, 1980.
n

There is a lack of understanding about the utility of the [3] J.P. Gadani, K.B. Misra, "A network reduction and transforma-
transformation technique. Most papers on the technique tion algorithm for assessing system effectiveness indexes", IEEE
have dealt with transformation equations and illustrated Trans. Reliability, vol R-30, 1981 Apr, pp 48-57.
their applications with an elementary complex network, [41 J.P. Gadani, K.B. Misra, "Quadrilateral-star transformation-II,
algorithm aspects", Microelectronics and Reliability, vol 22, no. 3,
i.e. a simple bridge network. The lack of a computer- 1982, pp 417-422.
amenable algorithm was another major limitation of the [5] E. Hansler, G.K. McAuliffee, R.S. Wilkov, "Exact calculation of
approach. This has created a misunderstanding that the computer network reliability", Networks, vol 4, 1974 Jul, pp
transformation approach is useful only for small complex 95-112.
networks and hence impractical, since for such networks
other reliability evaluation techniques seem to be more ad- AUTHOR
vantageous. With the development of the algorithm of [3,
4] it is possible to evaluate terminal pair reliabilities of very Dr. J.P. Gadani; Department of Electrical Engineering; L.E. College;
large complex networks. I have tested the algorithm with Morbi-363 642 INDIA.
26 reiabilty
neworksof dfferet sizs andconfiura- J.P. Gadani: For biography, see vol R-30, 1981 Apr, p 47.
tions. The main advantage of the transformation techni- Correspondence TR82-103 received 1982 September 20;revised1983 June
que is drastic reduction in CPU time and 23.***
0018-9529/83/1000-0390$01 .00©C 1983 IEEE