Time for failure free tests of systems subject to shocks and imperfect repair (Q1342875)

The subject of the paper is the determination of the statistical characteristics of the survival time of a system. Possible applications of the suggested approach are critical mission time fields. The assumptions are: one component systems, a sequence of exterior shocks adding to the cumulative damage suffered by the system, one spare unit (the first case) and no spare unit (in a second example), a testing policy that is based on a threshold value of the considered damage on the operating unit, a repair process that is perfect (in the first case) or imperfect (in the second example case) and brings the unit at a certain initial damage value, identical independent distribution for shock arrival times and for the shock damage levels. The goal: to determine the probability of the certain mission time without a failure and to determine the mean time, the variance and the second moment for the completion of the failure free test. Complete proofs are also provided.