Reliability analysis of a repairable k-out-of-n system with some components being suspended when the system is down

A k-out-of-n system with independent exponential components is investigated. It is assumed that some working components are suspended as soon as the system is down, repair starts immediately when a component fails and repair times are independent and exponentially distributed. Formulas for various reliability indices of the system including mean time between failures, mean working time in a failure–repair cycle, and mean down time in a failure–repair cycle are derived.