Reliability evaluation of multi-state systems

This paper provides a method for estimating the system state distribution for any multi-state consecutive k-out-of-n:F system including the increasing multi-state F system, the decreasing multi-state F system, and other F system. In the multi-state consecutive k-out-of-n: F system, both the system and its components may be in one of M+1 possible states: 0,1,...M. New algorithm for reliability evaluation of such system is presented. Furthermore, a numerical example is used to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiencies of the proposed method.