THE OPTIMAL SYSTEM FOR SERIES SYSTEMS WITH WARM STANDBY COMPONENTS AND A REPAIRABLE SERVICE STATION

This paper deals with the reliability and availability characteristics of three different series system configurations with warm standby components and a repairable service station. The failure time of the primary and warm standby are assumed to be exponentially distributed with parameters and respectively. The repair time distribution of each server is also exponentially distributed with parameter . The breakdown time and the repair time of the service station are also assumed exponentially distributed with parameters and respectively. We derive the reliability dependent on time, availability dependent on time, the mean time to failure, , and the steady-state availability for three configurations and perform comparisons. Comparisons are made for specific values of distribution parameters and of the cost of the components. The three configurations are ranked based on: , and where is either or .