Continuous Multistate System Universal Generating Function

Abstract

Usually, systems and components are described as being in one of two modes, “on”or “off.” Such systems are described using binary structure functions. In multistatesystems (MSS), components can be in more than two states—for example, there can be partially failed or partially operating modes. The system state can be described by continuously many values. A system that can have different task performance levels is named multi-state system (MSS). In this paper, we present a technique for solving a family of Continuous MSS reliability problems. A universal generating function (UGF) method is proposed for fast reliability estimation of continuous MSSs. The UGF method provides the ability to estimate relatively quickly different MSS reliability indices for series-parallel, parallel-series and bridge structures. It can be applied to MSS with different physical nature of system performance measure.