Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Dependability Analysis of Cold Standby Series-Parallel System

Abstract

This paper dealt with the evaluation reliability, availability, maintainability, dependability, mean time between failures, and mean time to failure of series-parallel system. The system under investigation has four subsystems, namely subsystem A containing two units in cold standby, subsystem B and C possess one unit each, and subsystem D has two units in cold standby. Through the transition diagram of each subsystem and the Markov birth–death process, Chapman Kolmogorov forward equations are derived. Both failure and repair rates of units in each subsystem are assumed to follow exponential distribution. The objective is to derive the corresponding reliability models of dependability, availability, maintainability, and reliability and capture the effect of system parameters on reliability, availability, maintainability, and dependability and to determine the critical subsystems. On the basis of numerical results obtained, the system’s performance has been evaluated. Moreover, the outcome of this study shows that the ideal system reliability can be achieved when the overall system failure rate is low and the supporting units are activated.