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Two suggestions of how to define a multistate coherent system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2016

B. Natvig
B. Natvig*
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
*
∗Postal address: Institute of Mathematics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1053, Blindern, Oslo 3, Norway.
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Abstract

One inherent weakness of traditional reliability theory is that the system and the components are always described just as functioning or failed. However, recent papers by Barlow and Wu (1978) and El-Neweihi et al. (1978) have made significant contributions to start building up a theory for a multistate system of multistate components. Here the states represent successive levels of performance ranging from a perfect functioning level down to a complete failure level. In the present paper we will give two suggestions of how to define a multistate coherent system. The first one is more general than the one introduced in the latter paper, the results of which are, however, extendable. (This is also true for a somewhat more general model than ours, treated in independent work by Griffith (1980).) Furthermore, some new definitions and results are given (which trivially extend to the latter model). Our second model is similarly more general than the one introduced in Barlow and Wu (1978), the results of which are again extendable. In fact we believe that most of the theory for the traditional binary coherent system can be extended to our second suggestion of a multistate coherent system.

Keywords

MULTISTATE COHERENT SYSTEMSCOHERENT SYSTEMSRELIABILITYPERFORMANCEREDUNDANCY
Type
Research Article
Information
Advances in Applied Probability , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 434 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1982 

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