Redundancy Analysis of Multi-State Systems with Common Bus Performance Sharing

Multi-state systems (MSSs) with common bus performance sharing (CBPS) is widely exist in practical engineering. This system is a typical redundant system to ensure the reliable operation. It considers two MSSs connected via a common bus, either of which has to satisfy its own demands, then transfer performance to the other system in order to improve the whole system reliability. In this paper, a new reliability model for MSSs with CBPS is proposed. Each multi-state component has a random performance and random demand. A Markov model is established to describe the performance and demand variations. An algorithm based on the universal generating function (UGF) method is proposed to evaluate the reliability of the whole system. The sensitivity analysis of systems with a given transmission capacity is discussed. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the method is illustrated by a numerical example.