Citation

Vaurio JK. Reliab. Eng. 1984; 7(1): 1-19.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(84)90047-7

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Fundamental relations are derived for the reliability, availability and other failure and repair characteristics of components with multiple failed states. These equations allow general-failure and repair-time distributions, initial conditions, and replacement components to be either old or new, and also allow the repair crew to be old or renewed for each failure. These new equations for multi-state components also provide new results for binary components and a systematic classification structure based on the repair policies. Solutions and solution techniques are introduced for the time-dependent and asymptotic state probabilities and failure and repair intensities. Applications to probabilistic risk assessments and reliability analyses of complex components are discussed.