Estimation of Mean Time between Failures in Two Unit Parallel Repairable System

Abstract

Mean time between failures is a method for estimating the reliability parameters of any repairable system. MTBF is also helpful in performing decision analysis in parallel and series systems and subsystems. The MTBF is the reciprocal of the failure rate when each component which fails is replaced immediately with another having the identical failure rate. There are situations when the assumption of a constant failure rate is not realistic and in many of these situations one assumes instead that the failure rate function increases or decreases smoothly with time i.e. there are no discontinuity or turning points. In this paper, we have tried to estimate MTBF taking real failure rate in case of two unit parallel repairable system and study its consistency with either the initial or the last stage of the failure rate curve.