Cold Standby System Availability

Systems operating in risky environments as weapon systems, hospital energy supply systems, and broadcasting systems strive for guaranteeing the highest possible availability. As a matter of fact, redundancy is the vital solution to the problems of poor availability.This paper uses Markov chain and transition probability matrix to obtain mathematical models to evaluate the steady-state availability of general redundant cold standby system of: 1-out-of-2, 3-out-of-4, and 6-out-of-8. The models are used to investigate the relation between the system availability and the repair rate to failure rate ratio in order to provide insights about the system setting needed to achieve the desired availability.