A reliability modeling and analysis method for PMS considering common cause failure

Common cause failures (CCFs) in a system destroy the hypothesis that the failures are independent, which may significantly impact the reliability evaluation of the system, especially the phased-mission system (PMS). Aimed at the impact of probabilistic common cause failure (PCCF) on reliability of mission in PMS, this paper discussed the relationship between common cause events and extended the probabilistic model of common cause events using Bayesian theory to make the model fit for different statistical relations including mutually exclusive, s-independent and s-dependent. Moreover, a module-based modeling and analysis method using binary decision diagram (BDD) and Markov model was proposed. First, the fault tree of each phase was constructed. Then, considering CCF, BDD and Markov model were used to deal with the static and dynamic module in PMS respectively. Third, mission reliability was evaluated using total probability law. Finally, a case study of satellite for its orbit transfer was supplied to verify the effectiveness of the method. In addition, the result of this paper was compared with the existing case to analyze the influence of CCFs on mission reliability.