Determination of MTSF and Availability of a Three Unit Standby Stochastic System by Using Base State

To evaluate easily and quickly, the key parameters of a stochastic system for its profit/cost analysis, has always remained the need of the hour. While using the Regenerative Point Technique, many state equations are to be written and solved recursively after taking Laplace/Stieltjes transforms of the state equations and then applying the concepts of limits, it takes a lot of time. Also while using Regenerative Point Graphical Technique (RPGT), introduced by Gupta [4], the presence of many circuits make the calculations lengthy. To overcome this difficulty, Gupta et al [3] introduced a new concept of ‘base state’ for doing reliability analysis to find the key parameters of the system (under steady state conditions) by using modified formulae of RPGT. In the present paper, the path analysis of a three unit stand-by stochastic system, in which initially, two units are in operative mode and a similar unit in cold stand-by mode, has been done to determine the ‘base state’ of the system, which is further used to determine the MTSF and Availability of the system using modified RPGT (under steady state conditions).