A combined method for reliability analysis of multi-state system of minor-repairable components

作者：Jinlei Qin, Yuguang Niu, Zheng Li · 发表于：Eksploatacja i Niezawodnosc - Maintenance and Reliability · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.17531/ein.2016.1.11 · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Reliability and Maintenance Optimization、Engineering Diagnostics and Reliability、Risk and Safety Analysis

A combined method for reliAbility AnAlysis of multi-stAte system of minor-repAirAble components czonA metodA AnAlizy niezAwodnoci systemu wielostAnowego skAdAjcego si z elementw podlegAjcych drobnej nAprAwie This paper discusses the multi-state system (MSS) consisted of multi-state components with minor failure and minor repair. In order to obtain the reliability indices of MSS, a new combined method is suggested. This method is based on the Markov stochastic process and the universal generating function (UGF) technology. The traditional idea of modeling the MSS is to use straightforward Markov process. That is not effective enough for the MSS because the model of the system is complicated usually and the state space often arouses "dimension curse" -huge numbers of the states. We suggest it should model the multi-state components and the UGF of multi-state components can be obtained firstly. Then the MSS can be decomposed into several subsystems which only contain simple series-parallel structure. According to the physical nature of the subsystems, the UGF of those subsystems can be employed recursively. Furthermore the UGF of the entire MSS will be obtained. Therefore, the reliability indices of the MSS can be evaluated easily. The suggested method simplifies greatly the complexity of calculation and is well formulized. Two numerical examples illustrate this method.