A Maintenance Policy for a Parallel System With Cascading Failure

摘要

This article considers an extended parallel system with cascading failure: Compared with the conventional parallel system with independent failure, the factor that cascading failure could reduce the reliability of the system due to redistribution of the workload. Reliability measures of the system are derived, using the theory of stochastic processes. To counteract the impact of cascading failure, a preventive maintenance policy is proposed. Further, this is applied to a dual active system. An optimal maintenance policy which minimizes the expected cost rate is derived. Finally, a numerical example is given and some discussions are made.