Asymptotic Approach to Reliability Analysis of Large Systems with Degrading Components

Basic notions of the multistate systems reliability analysis are discussed. The multistate homogeneous and non-homogeneous series, parallel, m out of n, series-parallel and parallel-series systems with degrading components are defined and their multistate reliability functions, risk functions and other characteristics are determined. The asymptotic approach to reliability analysis of large systems is defined and the notion of the multistate limit reliability function of the system is introduced. Auxiliary theorems on limit reliability functions of large multistate systems which are necessary to their approximate reliability evaluation are presented. The classes of limit reliability functions for the considered systems are fixed. Applications of the asymptotic approach to reliability evaluations of two large technical systems are presented and its accuracy is illustrated+.