Reliability and Importance Measures for Combined m-Consecutive-k-Out-of-n: F and Consecutive-kb-Out-of-n: F Systems with Non-Homogeneous Markov-Dependent Components

Abstract

A Combined [Formula: see text]-Consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text] and Consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text]: F System consists of [Formula: see text] components ordered in a line such that the system fails iff there exist at least [Formula: see text] consecutive failed components, or at least [Formula: see text] nonoverlapping runs of [Formula: see text] consecutive failed components, where [Formula: see text]. This system was been introduced by Mohan et al. [P. Mohan, M. Agrawal and K. Sen, Combined [Formula: see text]-consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text]: F and consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text]: F systems, IEEE Trans. Reliab. 58 (2009) 328–337] where they propose an algorithm to evaluate system reliability by using the (GERT) technique, in the independent case. In this paper, we propose a new formula of the reliability of this system for nonhomogeneous Markov-dependent components. For a Combined [Formula: see text]-Consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text] and Consecutive-[Formula: see text]-out-of-[Formula: see text]: F System with nonhomogeneous Markov-dependent components, we derive closed-form formulas for the marginal reliability importance measure of a single component, and the joint reliability importance measure of two or more than two components using probability generating function (pgf) and conditional pgf methods.