Ring Laser Gyroscope Warm Standby Redundancy Subject to Wearout Failure and Time Varying Thermal Stresses

This paper presents a reliability analysis for a 2-for-1 warm standby redundant RLG configuration subject to time varying thermal stress (temperature). Starting from reliability analysis at the component level on ring laser assemblies and support electronics box, a system level reliability model is developed for the configuration. To account for temperature’s time variation, the cumulative effect of exposure (or damage) models are used, along with the distribution parameter’s temperature dependency based on the Arrhenius model. An example is presented to demonstrate how the temperature’s time variation would affect the reliability at both component and system (2-for-l configuration) level. In conclusion, a proposed path-forward is outlined.