Reliability Analysis of Unrepairable Systems with k-out-of-m:G Subsystems Subject to Suspended Animation

Abstract

Two unrepairable series structure systems with k-out-of-m:G subsystems and spares are investigated. The first one consists of a k-out-of-m:G subsystem and a series subsystem while the other consists of two k-out-of-m:G subsystems. The systems have identical components with identical lifetime distributions and the working components are suspended as soon as the systems are down. Two Markov models are proposed for the reliability analysis of such systems and closed form results on the reliability and the mean time to failure (MTTF) are presented. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the impact of several parameters on the reliability of the systems.

Keywords:

• k-out-of-m:G system
• Markov chains
• Mean time to failure (MTTF)
• Reliability
• Unrepairable system

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 90B25
• 68M15

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11171019), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-11-0568), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 2011JBZ012 and 2013JBZ019).