Confidence Estimation of Reliability Indices of the System with Elements Duplication and Recovery

Abstract

The article considers a problem to estimate a confidence interval of the main reliability indices such as availability rate, mean time between failures, and operative availability (in the stationary state) for the model of the system with duplication and independent recovery of elements.Presents a solution of the problem for a situation that often arises in practice, when there are unknown exact values of the reliability parameters of the elements, and only test data of the system or its individual parts (elements, subsystems) for reliability are known. It should be noted that the problems of the confidence estimate of reliability indices of the complex systems based on the testing results of their individual elements are fairly common function in engineering practice when designing and running the various engineering systems. The available papers consider this problem, mainly, for non-recovery systems.Describes a solution of this problem for the important particular case when the system elements are duplicated by the reserved elements, and the elements that have failed in the course of system operation are recovered (regardless of the state of other elements).An approximate solution of this problem is obtained for the case of high reliability or "fast recovery" of elements on the assumption that the average recovery time of elements is small as compared to the average time between failures.

Keywords

• reliability
• system
• duplication
• availability rate
• mean time between failures
• operative availability