Reliability analysis of complex multistate systems based on an evidence-based discrete-time Bayesian network

Zhuang Li, Jinzhang Jia, Peng Jia and Zhiguo Yang

Journal of Risk and Reliability, 2025, vol. 239, issue 6, 1505-1525

Abstract: This paper presents an approach to address the uncertainty of each unit’s state information caused by a lack of data, complex structure, and lack of human cognition level in complex multistate systems in practical engineering. The units in the system having the same operating environment and structure can cause common-cause failures. With the change in the working time of the system, the reliability of the system also changes, which is referred to as the dynamic timing problem. This paper first expands the discrete-time Bayesian network based on the Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. This forms the reliability analysis method of the discrete-time Bayesian network of evidence. Then, the β factor method is used to analyze and compare the reliability of system units belonging to multiple common-cause failure groups and each unit separately at different times. Finally, the accuracy and feasibility of the method are proved by the hydraulic system of the pipelayer. This paper solves the problem of analyzing the reliability of multistate systems with uncertain probability information when the failure units belong to multiple common-cause failure groups at different times. The proposed approach of integrating the system multistate, uncertainty of state probability information of each unit, failure correlation among units, and dynamic timing solves the problem of reliability analysis while avoiding large errors in actual engineering.

Keywords: Multistate system (MSS); common-cause failure (CCF); D-S evidence theory; discrete-time Bayesian network (DTBN); reliability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748006X251323687 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:risrel:v:239:y:2025:i:6:p:1505-1525

DOI: 10.1177/1748006X251323687

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Risk and Reliability
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().