Survival signature for reliability evaluation of a multi-state system with multi-state components

Survival signature technology has recently attracted increasing attention for its merits on quantifying reliability of systems with multiple types of components. In order to implement reliability evaluation of multi-state system (MSS), computing methods of survival signature are studied for reliability analysis of several different systems in this paper. For an MSS consisting of multi-state components, its survival signature can be developed based on the different state definition of system. For the binary-state system with multi-state components, its survival signature is based on the generalization of survival signature for multi-state components. For a real life engineering MSS consisting of subsystems, the computing method of survival signature of system has also been derived based on the survival signature of subsystems and mapping of subsystems' states to system's states. This enables consecutive application of the new method to substantial realistic MSS, with no theoretical limit on the size of the systems. Examples illustrate the applicability of the analysis approach for systems reliability.