Derivation of Reliability Index Vector Formula for Series System and Its Application

In this study, a reliability index vector formula is proposed for series system with two failure modes in term of the concept of reliability index vector and equivalent failure modes. Firstly, the reliability index vector is introduced to determine the correlation coefficient between two failure modes, and then, the reliability index vector of a series system can be obtained. Several numerical cases and an analysis on offshore platform are performed, and the results show that this scheme provided here has better computational accuracy, and its calculation process is simpler for the series systems reliability calculations compared with the other methods. Also this scheme is more convenient for the engineering applications.