Reliability analysis of cold-standby phased-mission system based on GO-FLOW methodology and the universal generating function

Phased-mission system (PMS) with cold-standby systems play a critical role in various industrial engineering applications. However, the traditional GO-FLOW methodology is unable to effectively model cold-standby sys-tems and perform complex system reliability calculations because it must deal with shared signals. To address this issue, a new operator for simulating the cold-standby system is created, and a reliability analysis model for the PMS with sequential operation and time continuation is proposed based on the GO-FLOW methodology and universal generating function (UGF). In this approach, the type-41 operator is created to model the cold-standby system of 'One in Use and One for Standby with an uncertain changeover switch'. Furthermore, in the proposed analysis model, the applicability of the UGF to multi-state systems is used to obtain the expression of each operator. Through the intuitiveness of GO-FLOW model, the logical relationship between operators is obtained. The main advantage of the proposed model is that it avoids the need to deal with shared signals in the system reliability calculations. Finally, numerical examples of bulb and hydraulic systems are provided to illustrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method. The proposed approach makes the GO-FLOW methodology more practical in a PMS with sequential operation and time continuation.

Automated summary

This paper presents a new operator for simulating cold-standby systems and proposes a reliability analysis model for PMS with sequential operation and time continuation based on the GO-FLOW methodology and universal generating function (UGF). The main advantage of the proposed model is that it avoids the need to deal with shared signals in system reliability calculations. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method.