Reliability analysis of a single warm-standby system subject to repairable and nonrepairable failures

An n-unit system provisioned with a single warm standby is investigated. The individual units are subject to repairable failures, while the entire system is subject to a nonrepairable failure at some finite but random time in the future. System performance measures for systems observed over a time interval of random duration are introduced. Two models to compute these system performance measures, one employing a policy of block replacement, and the other without a block replacement policy, are developed. Distributional assumptions involving distributions of phase type introduce matrix Laplace transformations into the calculations of the performance measures. It is shown that these measures are easily carried out on a laptop computer using Microsoft Excel. A simple economic model is used to illustrate how the performance measures may be used to determine optimal economic design specifications for the warm standby.     

修理设备可更换且修理有延迟的两不同型部件并联可修系统

假定部件的寿命服从指数分布,其修理延迟时间和修理时间均服从一般分布,并且修理设备的寿命服从指数分布,其更换时间服从一般分布,利用马尔可夫更新过程理论和一种新的分解方法,研究了修理设备可更换且修理有延迟的两不同型部件并联可修系统,求得了系统和修理设备有关可靠性指标的一系列结果.     

Regions of exponential stability in coefficient space for linear systems on nonuniform discrete domains

The paper addresses the problem of exponential stability of linear control systems defined on nonuniform discrete domains. The main goal of this research is to find necessary and sufficient stability conditions in terms of the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial, associated with a system, and to study the geometry of stability regions, determined by the derived conditions in the coefficient space. As the first step in this direction, this paper presents such conditions for a special case of second-order systems defined on a discrete time scale with two asymptotic graininesses. The geometry of the corresponding regions in the coefficient space is illustrated for different values of the asymptotic graininesses.     

The complexity of recognizing linear systems with certain integrality properties

Let A be a 0 − 1 matrix with precisely two 1’s in each column and let 1 be the all-one vector. We show that the problems of deciding whether the linear system (1) defines an integral polyhedron, (2) is totally dual integral (TDI), and (3) box-totally dual integral (box-TDI) are all co-NP-complete, thereby confirming the conjecture on NP-hardness of recognizing TDI systems made by Edmonds and Giles in 1984. Supported in part by NSA grant H98230-05-1-0081 and NSF grants DMS-0556091 and ITR-0326387. Supported in part by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong and Seed Funding for Basic Research of HKU.     

Numbers with fixed sum of digits in linear recurrent number systems

We study the set of integers with a given sum of digits with respect to a linear recurrent digit system. An asymptotic formula for the number of integers ≤N with given sum of digits is determined, and the distribution in residue classes is investigated, thus generalizing results due to Mauduit and Sárközy. It turns out that numbers with fixed sum of digits are uniformly distributed in residue classes under some very general conditions. Namely, the underlying linear recurring sequence must have the property that there is no prime factor P of the modulus such that all but finitely many members of the sequence leave the same residue modulo P. The key step in the proof is an estimate for exponential sums using known theorems from Diophantine approximation.     

The influence of delivery times on repairable k-out-of-N systems with spares

The k-out-of-N structure is a popular type of redundancy in fault-tolerant systems with wide applications in computer and communication systems, and power transmission and distribution systems, among others, during the past several decades. In this paper, our interest is in such a reliability system with identical, repairable components having exponential life times, in which at least k out of N components are needed for the system to perform its functions. There is a single repairman who attends to failed components on a first-come-first-served basis. The repair times are assumed to be of phase type. The system has K spares which can be tapped to extend the lifetime of the system using a probabilistic rule. We assume that the delivery time of a spare is exponentially distributed and there could be multiple requests for spares at any given time. Our main goal is to study the influence of delivery times on the performance measures of the k-out-of-N reliability system. To that end, the system is analyzed using a finite quasi-birth-and-death process and some interesting results are obtained.     

A CLASS OF TRUST REGION METHODS FOR LINEAR INEQUALITY CONSTRAINED OPTIMIZATION AND ITS THEORY ANALYSIS Ⅱ. LOCAL CONVERGENCE RATE AND NUMERICAL TESTS

In this paper we prove that a class of trust region methods presented in part Ⅰ is superlinearly convergent. Numerical tests are reported thereafter. Results by solving a set of typical problems selected from literatures have demonstrated that our algorithm is effective.     

An algorithm of sequential systems of linear equations for nonlinear optimization problems with arbitrary initial point

For current sequential quadratic programming (SQP) type algorithms, there exist two problems: (i) in order to obtain a search direction, one must solve one or more quadratic programming subproblems per iteration, and the computation amount of this algorithm is very large. So they are not suitable for the large-scale problems; (ii) the SQP algorithms require that the related quadratic programming subproblems be solvable per iteration, but it is difficult to be satisfied. By using ε-active set procedure with a special penalty function as the merit function, a new algorithm of sequential systems of linear equations for general nonlinear optimization problems with arbitrary initial point is presented. This new algorithm only needs to solve three systems of linear equations having the same coefficient matrix per iteration, and has global convergence and local superlinear convergence. To some extent, the new algorithm can overcome the shortcomings of the SQP algorithms mentioned above. Project partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Tianyuan Foundation of China.     

Exact analytical inversion of TSK fuzzy systems with singleton and linear consequents

In literature, exact inversion methods for TSK fuzzy systems exist only for the systems with singleton consequents. These methods have binding limitations such as strong triangular partitioning, monotonic rule bases and/or invertibility check. These extra limitations lessen the modeling capabilities of the TSK fuzzy systems. In this study, an exact analytical inversion method for TSK fuzzy systems with singleton and linear consequents is presented. The only limitation of the proposed method is that the inversion variable should be represented by piecewise linear membership functions (PWL-MFs). In this case, the universe of discourse of the inversion variable is divided into specific regions in which only one linear piece exists for each PWL-MF at most. In the proposed method, the analytical formulation of TSK fuzzy system is expressed in terms of the inversion variable by using linear equations of PWL-MFs. Thus, the fuzzy system output in any region can be obtained by using the appropriate parameters of the linear equations of PWL-MFs defined within the related region. This expression provides a way to obtain linear and quadratic equations in terms of the inversion variable for TSK fuzzy systems with singleton and linear consequents, respectively. So, it becomes very easy to find exact inverse solutions for each region by using explicit analytical solutions for linear or quadratic equations. The proposed inversion method has been illustrated through simulation examples.     

Falsification of hybrid systems with symbolic reachability analysis and trajectory splicing

The falsification of a hybrid system aims at finding trajectories that violate a given safety property. This is a challenging problem, and the practical applicability of current falsification algorithms still suffers from their high time complexity. In contrast to falsification, verification algorithms aim at providing guarantees that no such trajectories exist. Recent symbolic reachability techniques are capable of efficiently computing linear constraints that enclose all trajectories of the system with reasonable precision. In this paper, we leverage the power of symbolic reachability algorithms to improve the scalability of falsification techniques. Recent approaches to falsification reduce the problem to a nonlinear optimization problem. We propose to reduce the search space of the optimization problem by adding linear state constraints obtained with a reachability algorithm. An empirical study of how varying abstractions during symbolic reachability analysis affect the performance of solving a falsification problem is presented. In addition, for solving a falsification problem, we propose an alternating minimization algorithm that solves a linear programming problem and a non-linear programming problem in alternation finitely many times. We showcase the efficacy of our algorithms on a number of standard hybrid systems benchmarks demonstrating the performance increase and number of falsifyable instances.     

Convergence in the pth-mean and some Weak Laws of Large Numbers for weighted sums of random elements in separable normed linear spaces

Theorem. Let X_n, n ≥ 1, be a sequence of tight random elements taking values in a separable Banach space B such that |X_n|, n ≥ 1, is uniformly integrable. Let a_nk, n ≥ 1, k ≥ 1, be a double array of real numbers satisfying Σ_{k ≥ 1} |a_nk| ≤ Γ for every n ≥ 1 for some positive constant Γ. Then Σ_{k ≥ 1}a_nkX_k, n ≥ 1, converges to 0 in probability if and only if Σ_{k ≥ 1}a_nkf(X_k), n ≥ 1, converges to 0 in probability for every f in the dual space B¹.     

Reliability analysis and optimization of weighted voting systems with continuous states input

Weighted voting systems are widely used in many practical fields such as target detection, human organization, pattern recognition, etc. In this paper, a new model for weighted voting systems with continuous state inputs is formulated. We derive the analytical expression for the reliability of the entire system under certain distribution assumptions. A more general Monte Carlo algorithm is also given to numerically analyze the model and evaluate the reliability. This paper further proposes a reliability optimization problem of weighted voting systems under cost constraints. A genetic algorithm is introduced and applied as the optimization technique for the model formulated. A numerical example is then presented to illustrate the ideas.     

Performance and reliability analysis of a repairable discrete‐time Geo/G/1 queue with Bernoulli feedback and randomized policy

This paper is concerned with a discrete‐time G e o /G /1 repairable queueing system with Bernoulli feedback and randomized ‐policy. The service station may be subject to failures randomly during serving customers and therefore is sent for repair immediately. The ‐policy means that when the number of customers in the system reaches a given threshold value N , the deactivated server is turned on with probability p or is still left off with probability 1?p . Applying the law of total probability decomposition, the renewal theory and the probability generating function technique, we investigate the queueing performance measures and reliability indices simultaneously in our work. Both the transient queue length distribution and the recursive expressions of the steady‐state queue length distribution at various epochs are explicitly derived. Meanwhile, the stochastic decomposition property is presented for the proposed model. Various reliability indices, including the transient and the steady‐state unavailability of the service station, the expected number of the service station breakdowns during the time interval and the equilibrium failure frequency of the service station are also discussed. Finally, an operating cost function is formulated, and the direct search method is employed to numerically find the optimum value of N for minimizing the system cost. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Controllability analysis of linear time-varying systems with multiple time delays and impulsive effects

In this paper, the issue of controllability for linear time-varying systems with multiple time delays in the control and impulsive effects is addressed. The solution of such systems based on the variation of parameters is derived. Several sufficient and necessary algebraic conditions for two kinds of controllability, i.e., controllability to the origin and controllability, are derived. The relation among these conditions are established. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Exact analysis of asymmetric random polling systems with single buffers and correlated input process

We introduce a simple approach for modeling and analyzing asymmetric random polling systems with single buffers and correlated input process. We consider two variations of single buffers system: the conventional system and the buffer relaxation system. In the conventional system, at most one customer may be resided in any queue at any time. In the buffer relaxation system, a buffer becomes available to new customers as soon as the current customer is being served. Previous studies concentrate on conventional single buffer system with independent Poisson process input process. It has been shown that the asymmetric system requires the solution ofm 2 ^m –1) linear equations; and the symmetric system requires the solution of 2 ^m–1–1 linear equations, wherem is the number of stations in the system. For both the conventional system and the buffer relaxation system, we give the exact solution to the more general case and show that our analysis requires the solution of 2 ^m –1 linear equations. For the symmetric case, we obtain explicit expressions for several performance measures of the system. These performance measures include the mean and second moment of the cycle time, loss probability, throughput, and the expected delay observed by a customer.     

Robust stability and stabilization of linear stochastic systems with Markovian switching and uncertain transition rates

This paper is concerned with the robust stabilization problem for a class of linear uncertain stochastic systems with Markovian switching. The uncertain stochastic system with Markovian switching under consideration involves parameter uncertainties both in the system matrices and in the mode transition rates matrix. New criteria for testing the robust stability of such systems are established in terms of bi-linear matrix inequalities (BLMIs), and sufficient conditions are proposed for the design of robust state-feedback controllers. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of our results.     

修理设备可更换且有修理延迟的N部件串联系统分析

假定部件的寿命服从指数分布,修理延迟时间和修理时间均服从任意分布,并且修理设备的寿命服从指数分布,其更换时间服从任意分布的情况下,利用马尔可夫更新过程理论和拉普拉斯变换工具,研究了修理有延迟且修理设备可更换的n部件串联可修系统,求得了系统的可用度和(0,t]时间内的平均故障次数.进一步,在定义修理设备“广义忙期”下,利用全概率分解,提出了一种新的分析技术,讨论了修理设备的可靠性指标,得到修理设备的一些重要可靠性结果.     

Solving linear systems of differential and difference equations with respect to a part of the unknowns

The existence of solutions y to a linear differential or difference system whose components $y_{i_1 } ,...,y_{i_m } $ belong to a given class of functions and the problem of constructing such components are considered.     

Analysis of s,S inventory systems with general lead time and demand distribution and adjustable reorder size

Stochastic Inventory systems of (s, S) type with general lead time distribution are studied when the time intervals between successive demands are independently and identically distributed. The demands are assumed to occur for one unit at a time and the quantity reordered is subject to review at the epoch of replenishment so as to level up the inventory to S. An explicit characterization of the inventory level is provided. The model is flexible enough to allow complete backlogging and or deal with shortages. A general method of dealing with cost over an arbitrary time interval is indicated. Special cases are discussed when either the lead time or the interval between successive demands is exponentially distributed.