Reliability Evaluation of Linear Consecutive-Weighted System

Abstract

Reliability evaluation has a vital importance at all stages of processing and controlling modern engineering systems. In most of these modern systems the components have different contributions to the system, which are defined as weights. Among the other weighted systems, a linear consecutive-weighted-k-out-of-n:F system consists of n components, where each component has its own weight and reliability. The system fails if and only if the total weight of the failed consecutive components is at least k. The aim of this paper is to study the reliability of linear consecutive-weighted-k-out-of-n: F system consisting of independent & nonidentical and nonhomogeneous Markov dependent components. Exact formulae are provided for computing the reliability for above mentioned cases. Approximation formulae for the reliability are also presented.