An estimation method for the reliability of "consecutive-k-out-of-n system"

Abstract

This paper is concerned with consecutive-k-out-of-n system in which all the components have the same q lifetime probability, so, it's possible to estimate q from a sample by using the maximum likelihood principle. In the reliability formula of the consecutive-k-out-of-n system appears the term q^k. The goal in this work is to propose a direct estimation of q^k to avoid the accumulated errors owed to the power. More precisely, we establish a new method based on the Markov chains to calculate and estimate the reliability of the system.