50 research outputs found
Degradation Analysis of Probabilistic Parallel Choice Systems
Degradation analysis is used to analyze the useful lifetimes of systems,
their failure rates, and various other system parameters like mean time to
failure (MTTF), mean time between failures (MTBF), and the system failure rate
(SFR). In many systems, certain possible parallel paths of execution that have
greater chances of success are preferred over others. Thus we introduce here
the concept of probabilistic parallel choice. We use binary and -ary
probabilistic choice operators in describing the selections of parallel paths.
These binary and -ary probabilistic choice operators are considered so as to
represent the complete system (described as a series-parallel system) in terms
of the probabilities of selection of parallel paths and their relevant
parameters. Our approach allows us to derive new and generalized formulae for
system parameters like MTTF, MTBF, and SFR. We use a generalized exponential
distribution, allowing distinct installation times for individual components,
and use this model to derive expressions for such system parameters