Economic design of a load-sharing consecutive -out-of-:F system

This article considers a linear and circular consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system composed of n identical components with exponential failure time distributions and subjected to a total load that is equally shared by all the working components in the system. The event of a component failure results in a higher load, therefore inducing a higher failure rate, in each of the surviving components. A power rule relationship between the amount of the load shared by surviving components and the failure rate of the surviving components is assumed. The system reliability of the proposed consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system with load-sharing dependency is obtained. Three optimization problems (in which the expected cost per unit time is used as an optimization criterion) are considered to determine the system configuration n and a preventive maintenance interval. The effect of dependence parameters, the system configuration parameter k, and various cost parameters on the optimal n and maintenance interval are investigated in numerical examples. A comparison between the three problems is also performed. Accepted in 2005 for a special issue on Reliability co-edited by Hoang Pham, Rutgers University: Dong Ho Park, Hallym University, Korea; and Richard Cassady, University of Arkansas.