Citation

Bendell A, Ansell J. Reliab. Eng. 1984; 8(3): 165-178.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(84)90022-2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper is a first attempt to clarify some of the confusion in multistate extensions to the concept of coherent systems. Whilst physically and theoretically important, the description and analysis of systems whose components can each take any one of a set of levels of partial or derated performance has been confused due to differing and often poorly justified definitions. The paper commences with brief reviews of proposed multistate extensions, and of the main results which exist for binary coherent systems. The importance of relevancy is discussed. The generalisation of properties of binary coherent systems to the various types of multistate system is considered.