Three models for the aggregated stochastic processes based on an underlying continuous-time Markov repairable system are developed in which two-part partition of states is used. Several availability measures such as interval availability, instantaneous availability and steady-state availability are presented. Some of these availabilities are derived by using Laplace transforms, which are more compact and concise. Other reliabilitydistributions for these three models are given as well.
Keywords Two-part partition • Aggregation • Repairable systems • Availability measures • Distributions 1 IntroductionRepairable systems have been increasingly studied in the field of reliability (e.g. Altinel et al. 2011 andCancela et al. 2012). For example, Cui and Xie (2001, 2004) considered periodically inspected repairable systems. Cui and Li (2004) described a repairable system in which the number of allowed repairs is finite. Guo et al. (2007) proposed a new general repair model based on the number of repairs. The class of coherent systems composed of random failing repairable components is studied by Kiureghian et al. (2007). And the segregated failures model of availability of fault-tolerant computer systems with severable recovery procedures are presented by Vilkomir et al. (2008). Moreover, Ambani et al. (2010) discussed exponential machines with maintenance-reliability coupling problem. Yu and Cui (2010) studied a two-stage directed network of Markov repairable systems. Peng et al. (2011) considered the reliability and maintenance modeling for multiple dependent competing failure processes, and so forth (e.g. Srinivasan and Subramanian 2006).