Joint optimization of mission abort and component switching policies for multistate warm standby systems

Abstract

Safety-critical systems have been widely applied in various practical engineering fields to perform specific missions. Failures of such systems will lead to significant damage, thus, mission abort polices can be implemented to enhance system survivability. Warm standby is one of the most commonly used techniques in mission-critical and safety-critical systems to reduce failure risk during mission execution. Switching between working component and standby component is a feasible way to balance component degradation and extend system lifetime. Motivated by these results, we propose a joint optimization model that captures both component switching and mission abort policies for multistate warm standby systems. The optimal component switching and mission abort policies based on component condition are obtained to balance the trade-off between mission success probability and system survivability and to minimize the long-run expected total economic loss. A numerical study of virtual machine system is conducted to demonstrate the proposed model and obtained results.