Reliability evaluation of multi-state series-parallel systems with common bus performance sharing considering transmission loss

In a multi-state system with common bus performance sharing, each multi-state unit has a random performance and should satisfy its individual random demand. If the performance of a unit exceeds its demand, the surplus performance can be transmitted to units that experience performance deficiency. Performance transmission is an important feature of systems with performance sharing. Transmission loss exists widely in many real systems with performance sharing mechanism. However, transmission loss has never been studied in such systems. The reliability of systems with performance sharing will be overestimated if the transmission loss is ignored. In this paper, the transmission loss defined as a function of the transmission distance and the performance transmitted through the common bus is taken into account in systems with common bus performance sharing, and a universal generating function (UGF)-based method is proposed to evaluate the system reliability. Analytical and numerical examples are given to validate the proposed method.