Reliability modeling for dependent competing failure processes of damage self-healing systems

Systems experiencing multiple dependent competing failure processes (MDCFP) have attracted much attention in the recent years. Similar to the biological systems, which have the ability to heal after being wounded; damage self-healing exists in many systems and products due to the intrinsic resistance to abrupt damage. The earlier research assumed the dependence between shock process and random shock but didn't take the damage self-healing process into consideration, which occurs in many engineering systems. In the paper, a new reliability model subject to MDCFP by considering the damage self-healing phenomenon is developed. For each random shock, we propose healing time and healing level concept to describe the self-healing process. The model is practical and realistic for many complex systems such as electrical devices or microelectronic polymeric components. Due to complexity of the model, there is no analytical form of the reliability function. However, we estimate the system reliability efficiently by using simulation method. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed model is general model that can be transformed into many classical degradation and shock models in different parameter settings.