Availability Analysis of Embedded Computer System with Two Types of Failure and Common Cause Failure

Abstract

Redundancy of hardware components is generally required to design highly reliable embedded computer systems. A common form of
redundancy is a K-out-of-N: G system in which at least K out of N components must be good for the system to be good. This investigation is concerned with a Markov model for K-out-of-N: G system with common cause failure. The hardware system consists of N non- identical components and Y warm standby components. There is a single repairman who repairs the failed components on a first-come-first-served basis. The developed probabilistic model represents the redundant computer system with one software component. The software/hardware system along with human error and hardware error has been investigated in order to obtain reliability indices under the assumption that each components may fail due to two types of failures (hardware and human) or common cause or software failure. Numerical results have been facilitated with the help of Runge-Kutta method of fourth order to validate the analytical results. The sensitivity of parameters on system availability has also been carried out.