Performance Assessment of Redundancy Strategies of Systems Subject to External Shocks

Abstract

Engineering systems are subject to degradation due to operational conditions and usage. The systems are also subject to random external shocks that are capable of causing abrupt failures. To maintain desired system performance and enhance reliability and availability, the systems are often equipped with redundant components. Different redundancy strategies are often employed including active and passive redundancy. Choice of strategies is dependent on the operational context and desired performance. In this paper, we analyse the performance of different redundancy strategies considering component degradation and random external shocks. The piecewise deterministic Markov process is used to model the system and compared with Monte Carlo simulation to approximate system unavailability considering different frequencies of random external shocks.