A NEW SHOCK MODEL WITH A CHANGE IN SHOCK SIZE DISTRIBUTION

For a system that is subject to shocks, it is assumed that the distribution of the magnitudes of shocks changes after the first shock of size at least d(1), and the system fails upon the occurrence of the first shock above a critical level d(2) (> d(1)). In this paper, the distribution of the lifetime of such a system is studied when the times between successive shocks follow matrix-exponential distribution. In particular, it is shown that the system's lifetime has matrix-exponential distribution when the intershock times follow Erlang distribution. The model is extended to the case when the system fails upon the occurrence of l consecutive critical shocks.