RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY AND MTTF OF A SYSTEM SUBJECTED TO COMMON CAUSE AND HUMAN ERROR FAILURES

Abstract

The Reliability and availability analysis can be used in research and development to evaluate the performance of new systems technologies and components. In the context of three unit series parallel system availability analysis can help to evaluate the reliability and availability of the system, identify the most critical components and sub systems, optimize the system configuration and maintenance strategies and assess the risk of system failures and develop strategies. This paper presents the reliability and availability analysis of a three unit series parallel system subjected to common cause and human error failures. A general method for the system steady state availability or limiting availability of the system is developed when failed system repair times are gamma distributed.