Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 111093 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Reliability Engineering and System Safety |
| Volume | 261 |
| Early online date | 4 Apr 2025 |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 4 Apr 2025 |
Abstract
Admitting its potential in flexible manufacturing, the reconfigurable multi-stage system (RMS) is widely used in modern industries while its reliability is of great importance since the failure of any composing stage will lead to the system failure and abortion of the whole mission. In this paper, we present a survival signature-based framework for the reliability of an RMS. The idea of our approach is to convert a conventional probability estimation problem to a graph-based path-searching problem, thus the tedious Monte Carlo sampling is simplified. To this end, an unconnected path graph method is developed to calculate the number of working paths of the equivalent graph model of RMS. Instead of directly enumerating all possible working paths, those paths of interest are identified by searching unconnected nodes via backtracking while the computation cost is reduced. To further address the case of an RMS with shared components, a sequential unconnected path graph (SUPG) method is developed. The proposed method is validated through two numerical cases and an application example. The results show our method can identify the “bottleneck” stage once the system is reconfigured with saved computational cost.
Keywords
- Reconfigurable multi-stage system, Reliability evaluation, Survival signature, System reliability, Unconnected path graph
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Engineering(all)
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
- Engineering(all)
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
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In: Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Vol. 261, 111093, 09.2025.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Graph-based reliability evaluation of a reconfigurable multi-stage system using sequential unconnected path sets
AU - Yang, Lechang
AU - Wang, Jinwei
AU - Xie, Min
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2025/4/4
Y1 - 2025/4/4
N2 - Admitting its potential in flexible manufacturing, the reconfigurable multi-stage system (RMS) is widely used in modern industries while its reliability is of great importance since the failure of any composing stage will lead to the system failure and abortion of the whole mission. In this paper, we present a survival signature-based framework for the reliability of an RMS. The idea of our approach is to convert a conventional probability estimation problem to a graph-based path-searching problem, thus the tedious Monte Carlo sampling is simplified. To this end, an unconnected path graph method is developed to calculate the number of working paths of the equivalent graph model of RMS. Instead of directly enumerating all possible working paths, those paths of interest are identified by searching unconnected nodes via backtracking while the computation cost is reduced. To further address the case of an RMS with shared components, a sequential unconnected path graph (SUPG) method is developed. The proposed method is validated through two numerical cases and an application example. The results show our method can identify the “bottleneck” stage once the system is reconfigured with saved computational cost.
AB - Admitting its potential in flexible manufacturing, the reconfigurable multi-stage system (RMS) is widely used in modern industries while its reliability is of great importance since the failure of any composing stage will lead to the system failure and abortion of the whole mission. In this paper, we present a survival signature-based framework for the reliability of an RMS. The idea of our approach is to convert a conventional probability estimation problem to a graph-based path-searching problem, thus the tedious Monte Carlo sampling is simplified. To this end, an unconnected path graph method is developed to calculate the number of working paths of the equivalent graph model of RMS. Instead of directly enumerating all possible working paths, those paths of interest are identified by searching unconnected nodes via backtracking while the computation cost is reduced. To further address the case of an RMS with shared components, a sequential unconnected path graph (SUPG) method is developed. The proposed method is validated through two numerical cases and an application example. The results show our method can identify the “bottleneck” stage once the system is reconfigured with saved computational cost.
KW - Reconfigurable multi-stage system
KW - Reliability evaluation
KW - Survival signature
KW - System reliability
KW - Unconnected path graph
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105002294587&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111093
DO - 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111093
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105002294587
VL - 261
JO - Reliability Engineering and System Safety
JF - Reliability Engineering and System Safety
SN - 0951-8320
M1 - 111093
ER -