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Multistate coherent systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

E. El-Neweihi
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
F. Proschan
Affiliation:
Florida State University
J. Sethuraman
Affiliation:
Florida State University

Abstract

The vast majority of reliability analyses assume that components and system are in either of two states: functioning or failed. The present paper develops basic theory for the study of systems of components in which any of a finite number of states may occur, representing at one extreme perfect functioning and at the other extreme complete failure. We lay down axioms extending the standard notion of a coherent system to the new notion of a multistate coherent system. For such systems we obtain deterministic and probabilistic properties for system performance which are analogous to well-known results for coherent system reliability.

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1978 

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