Asymptotic approach to reliability and risk evaluation of multi-state series and series-parallel systems with assisting components

摘要

In the reliability investigation of large scale systems the problem of the complexity of their reliability functions arises. This problem may be approximately solved by the assuming that the number of the system components tends to infinity and finding the limit reliability function of the system. The results for series, parallel, series-parallel and parallel-series two-state systems are given in (Barlow and Proschan 1975, Kolowrocki 1993, 1998). Systems with multi-state components are more common and play an important role in the technical practice. Therefore, limit reliability functions and approximate formulae for any multi-state series and series-parallel systems with assisting components in the paper are given. Moreover, some applications of these results are presented.