Reliability-based measures and prognostic analysis of a K-out-of-N system in a random environment

In this paper, we study reliability based measures and prognostic problems of a K-out-of-N system in which the failure process of each component depends not only on its intrinsic characteristic but also on its operating environment conditions. The system reliability and the expected remaining useful lifetime are calculated. Under the periodic inspection policy, the system asymptotic availability is derived. We aim at providing explicit expressions for these quantities. The model allows us to incorporate the observation information of the environment in the evaluation of the system performances. Numerical examples show the efficiency and accuracy of our method by comparing with the Monte-Carlo simulations. It is pointed out that the environment condition has significant effect on the system reliability based measures and the system prognostic analysis.