Reliability evaluation of standby redundant systems based on the survival signatures methods

Standby redundant design is extensively used in many practical systems to improve system reliability. Various methodologies have been developed to analyze the reliability of standby redundant systems. However, most methods require complex analytical procedures or significant simulation time to perform an accurate analysis due to the existence of sequential failure events (SFEs). In this paper, the survival signature-based methods are proposed for the rapid reliability evaluation of standby redundant systems. First, we deduced state probabilistic expressions of SFEs under the survival signature paradigm using conditional probability. Second, an analytical method for accurately calculating the survival signatures and reliability of the considered system is proposed based on the obtained state probabilistic expressions. Third, for large-scale and complex systems, we also proposed a simulation method to simplify the cumbersome calculations in proposed analytical method. The proposed simulation method is implemented by two algorithms, and can efficiently approximate the system reliability at a massive reduction in the simulation demands. Three examples are examined to highlight the superiority of the proposed methods compared with other methods.