A unified theory for coherent systems in reliability I. A generalization for some classic theory: Monotone binary coherent systems

Binary coherent system theory has played an important part in reliability. Its extension to (‘degradable’ or ‘multistate’ or) multinary systems has recently been considered in various papers, through various definitions. This paper lays the foundations of a unified theory for coherent systems by first giving unified arguments to apply and to investigate further binary and multinary systems. Monotone binary systems are introduced and examined by generalizing classic deterministic and probabilistic results. Applications of monotone coherence to the multinary case are proposed in a companion paper with a unified viewpoint on multinary coherent systems. As an indication, monotone constraints are defined with a partition of the component set and some total orderings imposed on the elements of the concerned partition. The discrete partition retrieves the classic theory of (free) binary coherent systems; some constraints defined from component levels lead to multinary coherent systems; some other constraints apply to systems submitted to some ‘common stresses’, e.g. the organizing system of a monotone coherent decomposition.     

A unified theory for coherent systems in reliability part III: Two special cases for multinary systems—binary-type coherence and homogeneous coherence

As shown in a companion-paper,¹ binary and multinary coherent systems can be studied with unified arguments, through monotone binary coherent systems. These are binary coherent systems submitted to some monotone constraint and generalize the classic theory of free binary coherent systems. By considering the unified point of view thus obtained, this paper gives what is perhaps the most suggestive representation for multinary coherent systems, since this extends the definition of binary coherent systems in terms of series-parallel (parallel-series) structures. Then, this paper examines the special case of multinary systems that can be studied directly with the classic theory of free binary coherent systems. It thus enlarges and complements, in a shorter unified manner, the particular cases considered in earlier studies.