Reliability and performance modeling for mission-oriented k-out-of-n system under common cause failures

This paper proposes a reliability and performance analysis and modeling methodology for mission-oriented k-out-of-n systems. The system is assumed to suffer both independent internal failures and external common cause shocks, of which arrivals are both modeled by Poisson processes. Periodic missions are assigned to the system due to a fixed schedule. A performance measure is introduced based on the mission workload and number of components working in the system. By modeling the failure modes on such systems with a Markov chain model, the defined reliability and performance is given in analytical forms. In a following numerical example, we illustrate the reliability and performance for such systems by the proposed approach.