Stochastic comparisons of residual lifetimes and inactivity times of coherent systems

Abstract

Under the assumption of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) components, the problem of the stochastic comparison of a coherent system having used componentsand a used coherent system has been considered. Necessary and sufficient conditions on structure functions have been provided for the stochastic comparison of a coherent system having used/inactive i.i.d. components and a used/inactive coherent system. As a consequence, for r-out-of-n systems, it has been shown that systems having used i.i.d. components stochastically dominate used systems in the likelihood ratio ordering. © Applied Probability Trust 2013.