Availability of 3-state System with Cyclic Operations

Abstract

Abstract This paper mentions about availability of an electric switch or a flow valve. These units are given two kind of commands (pass through and stop), which repeat regularly with cyclic operations, and fail in more than two kind of modes (short-mode, open-mode, and leak-mode) at each command in this paper. Three system models are defined. Availability is calculated by making use of Markov process. Some numerical examples are shown to compare these models and a conventional 2-state model.