Constant Failure Rate of Redundant Repairable Hardware

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the nature of the failure rates of redundant repairable hardware. The analysis considers the case of two nominally identical, functionally independent parts. Part failures are assumed to occur randomly, with the time to failure taken to be exponentially distributed with constant failure rates. Part repair times are assumed to be constant. It is shown that the instantaneous failure rate, of the two-part redundant system is essentially constant for all but a short initial period and that the average failure rate quickly approaches a constant asymptotic value.