ON THE SIGNATURE OF COHERENT SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS

Abstract

In the present article we provide a formula that facilitates the evaluation of the signature of a reliability structure by a generating function approach. A simple sufficient condition is also derived for proving the nonpreservation of the IFR property for the system's lifetime (when the components are IFR) by exploiting the signature of the system. As an application of the general results, we deduce recurrence relations for the signature of a linear consecutive k-out-of-n: F system. We establish a simple relation between the signature of a linear and a circular system and investigate the IFR preservation property under the formulation of such systems.