Reliability analysis for multi‐state systems subject to distinct random shocks

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyzes the competing and dependent failure processes for multi‐state systems suffering from four typical random shocks. Reliability analysis for discrete degradation is conducted by explicitly modeling the state transition characteristics. Semi‐Markov model is employed to explore how the system vulnerability and potential transition gap affect the state residence time. The failure dependence is specified as that random shocks can not only lead to different abrupt failures but also cause sudden changes on the state transition probabilities, making it easier for the system to stay at the degraded states. Reliability functions for all the exposed failure processes are presented based on the corresponding mechanisms. Interactions between different failure processes are also taken into account to evaluate the actual reliability levels in the context of degradation and distinct random shocks. An illustrative example of a multi‐state air conditioning system is studied to demonstrate how the proposed method can be applied to the engineering practice.