Coherent System With Standby Components

Abstract

A coherent system that consists of n independent components and equipped with r cold standby components is considered. A generalized mixture representation for the survival function of such a system is obtained, and it is used to examine reliability properties of the system. In particular, the effect of adding r standby components to a given set of original components is measured by computing mean time to failure of the system. The limiting behavior of the failure rate of the system is also examined using the mixture representation. The results are illustrated for a bridge system. A case study that is concerned with an oil pipeline system is also presented.