RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF k-OUT-OF-n SYSTEMS BASED ON A GROUPING OF COMPONENTS

In this paper we treat a two-stage grouping procedure of building a k-out-of-n system from several clusters of components. We use a static framework in which the component reliabilities are fixed. Under such a framework, we address the impact of the selecting strategies, the sampling probabilities, and the component reliabilities on the constructed system's reliability. An interesting finding is that the level of component reliabilities could be identified as a decisive factor in determining how the selecting strategies and the component reliabilities affect the system reliability. The new results generalize and extend those established earlier in the literature such as Di Crescenzo and Pellerey (2011), Hazra and Nanda (2014), Navarro, Pellerey, and Di Crescenzo (2015), and Hazra, Finkelstein, and Cha (2017). Several Monte Carlo simulation experiments are provided to illustrate the theoretical results.