Some Reliability Measures and Maintenance Policies for a Coherent System Composed of Different Types of Components

Abstract

Consider an n-components coherent system monitored at one or two inspection times, and some information about the system and its components is obtained. Under these conditions, some variants of mean residual lifetimes can be defined. Also, the dual concept of the residual lifetime, i.e., inactivity time is defined for a failed system under different conditions. This article is concerned with the study of mean residual lives and mean inactivity times for a coherent system made of multiple types of dependent components. The dependency structure is modeled by a survival copula. The notion of survival signature is employed to represent the system's reliability function and subsequently its mean residual lives and mean inactivity times under different events at the monitoring time. These dynamic measures are used frequently to study the reliability characteristics of a system. Also, they provide helpful tools for designing the optimal maintenance policies to preserving the system from sudden and costly failures. Here, we extend some maintenance strategies for a coherent system consists of multiple dependent components. Some illustrative examples are provided.