Reliability and Availability Analysis of a Repairable $k$-out-of-$n:G$ System With $R$ Repairmen Subject to Shut-Off Rules

The
k
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out
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of
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n
:
G
system is widely used in reliability and maintenance engineering. We consider a general
k
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out
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of
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n
:
G
system which has identical components with identical repair time and lifetime distributions. There are
R
identical repairmen in the system. The shut-off rules of suspended animation, continuous operation, and a mixture of these two are studied. Repair times and lifetimes are assumed to be statistically independent and exponentially distributed (within, and between). We derive new closed form solutions for important performance measures including steady state availability, mean time to system failure, and mean time to first system failure.