Analysis and optimal design of systems operating in a random environment and having a rescue option

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a model for a system exposed to a random environment characterized by the Poisson shock processes. A subset of the system components ℜ_M is required for a mission completion. Failures of some components of this subset terminate a mission, whereas failures of other components are not terminal and allow for a rescue operation that is activated immediately upon failure. This operation is performed by a subset ℜ_R of the system components and succeeds if all components from ℜ_R survive all shocks occurring until its completion. The subsets ℜ_M and ℜ_R overlap. The duration of the rescue operation depends on the time of its activation. The components that are engaged only in the rescue operation remain in the warm standby mode during the primary mission. An approach for obtaining the mission success and the system survival probabilities is developed and an algorithm for the corresponding numerical computation is presented. An example analyzing the tradeoff between these two probabilities and illustrating optimization of the system protection design is given.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk analysis
• mission success probability
• system survival probability
• shock process
• rescue operation
• unmanned aerial vehicles

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory Levitin

Gregory Levitin is presently a distinguished visiting professor at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and a senior expert at the Reliability Department of the Israel Electric Corporation. His current interests are in operations research and artificial intelligence applications in system reliability and defense. In this field, Prof. Levitin has published more than 290 papers and 4 books. He is chair of the ESRA Technical Committee on System Reliability. He served as associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Reliability, area coordinator of International Journal of Performability Engineering and is currently an associate editor of Reliability Engineering & System Safety, IISE Transactions and a member of editorial boards of Journal of Risk and Reliability, and Reliability and Quality Performance.

Maxim Finkelstein

Maxim Finkelstein received his Doctor of Science degree (habilitation) in operations research from St. Petersburg Elektropribor Institute (1993). Currently he is a distinguished professor at the Department of Mathematical Statistics, University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa and a visiting professor at the ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His main research interests include reliability theory and applications, survival analysis, risk and safety modeling, applied stochastic processes. He had published more than 200 papers and 6 books on different aspects of reliability and stochastic modelling. He serves as a Board Member and Associate Editor for a number of international journals.

Hong-Zhong Huang

Hong-Zhong Huang is a full professor of School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, UESTC. He is also the director of Center for System Reliability and Safety. He has held visiting appointments at several universities in the USA, Canada, and Asia. He has published 280 journal papers and 8 books in the fields of reliability engineering, optimization design, fuzzy sets theory and product development. Prof. Huang is an ISEAM Fellow, a technical committee member of ESRA, a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Reliability and Applications, and an Editorial Board Member of several international journals.