Abstract
•A production system with multiple imperfect storage units is considered.•The storage units are filled one after another.•The storage supplies the demand in the case of production unit failing.•An algorithm is proposed to assess the mission success probability.•Numerical results demonstrate the impacts of system parameters.
Product storage is a crucial component of some engineering or technological systems. Considering storage in the system reliability analysis has recently attracted research attentions. The existing models have mostly assumed a single storage unit per system or subsystem. In this work, we contribute by modeling the reliability of an unrepairable system with multiple consecutively-used storage units (SUs), which are characterized by initial and maximum capacities and an arbitrary time-to-failure distribution. The surplus product generated by the system's production unit (PU) is uploaded to the SUs, which are filled one after another. The products accumulated in available SUs may subsequently supply the required system demand in the case of the PU failing. A numerical approach is proposed to assess the mission success probability (MSP) of the considered system with multiple imperfect SUs. A case study on a five-tank water supply system is conducted to demonstrate the proposed model. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the impacts of several system parameters (including SU's initial and maximum capacities, PU's productivity, system demand, and mission time) and their interactions on the MSP and the optimal maximum capacity of SUs.