Reliability analysis of an (N+1)-unit standby system with 'preemptive priority' rule

This paper deals with a repairable standby system consisting of N+1 units and a single repair facility, in which unit 1 has preemptive priority both in getting operation and in getting repaired. Under the general assumptions that life time and repair time of unit 1 have general continuous distributions, we discuss the system's stochastic behavior and obtain the explicit expressions, both in transient state and in steady state, of some main interesting reliability indices of the system.