Reliability assessment for balanced systems with restricted rebalanced mechanisms

Research on reliability modeling and assessment for balanced systems has been getting increased attention in the field of reliability and engineering due to its developments both in theory and applications. In existing research on balanced systems, forcing down and resuming units are two main ways to rebalance the system after unit failures and they are assumed to be perfectly accomplished. In this paper, two restricted rebalanced mechanisms are proposed by considering random failures of unit forced-down function and resumed function respectively with the intent of modelling actual engineering situations. Based on the two restricted rebalanced mechanisms, corresponding new balanced systems are constructed respectively. The operation mechanisms and system failure criteria of the new models are different from those of existing models. A Markov process imbedding approach is employed to analyze the system reliability and derive related probabilistic indices of the proposed models. Case studies have served the purpose to present the applicability of the new balanced systems with restricted rebalanced mechanisms and the effectiveness of the proposed approach.