Reliability analysis of a warm standby repairable system with priority in use

In this paper, a warm standby repairable system consisting of two dissimilar units and one repairman is studied. In this system, it is assumed that the working time distributions and the repair time distributions of the two units are both exponential, and unit 1 is given priority in use. After repair, both unit 1 and unit 2 are as good as new. Moreover, the transfer switch in the system is unreliable, and the function of the switch is: as long as the switch fails, the whole system fails immediately. Under these assumptions, using Markov process theory and the Laplace transform, some important reliability indexes and some steady state system indexes are derived. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the theoretical results of the model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.