Performance evaluation and availability analysis of a harvesting system using fuzzy reliability approach

Abstract

Conventional reliability of a system consider the binary state assumption of the probability theory, i.e., either success or failed. But this assumption is unrealistic for large complex systems like harvesting systems due to lack of sufficient probabilistic information. The uncertainty of each individual component enhances the uncertainty of the whole system. In this paper, the concept of fuzzy reliability has been used for the analysis of fuzzy availability of a harvesting system. The effect of coverage factor, failure and repair rate of subsystems on system fuzzy availability has been analysed. Mathematical formulation of problem with help of mnemonic rule and Chapman-Kolmogorov differential equations has been done. The governing differential equations are solved by Runge–Kutta method of order four using MATLAB (Ode 45 function).