Availability analysis of a generalized maintainable three-state device parallel system with human error and common-cause failures

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to study the combined effect of human error, common-cause failure, redundancy, and maintenance policies on the performance of a system composed of three-state devices. Generalized expressions for time-dependent and steady state availability of a generalized maintainable three-state device parallel system subjected to human errors and common-cause failures are developed in the paper under two maintenance policies: Type I repair policy (i.e. only the completely failed system is repaired); and Type IT repair policy (i.e. both partially and completely failed system is repaired). The Markov method is used to develop general and special case expressions for state probabilities, and system time-dependent and steady state availabilities.