Equivalency of multi-state survival signatures of multi-state systems of different sizes and its use in the comparison of systems

In this paper, the multi-state survival signature is first redefined for multi-state coherent or mixed systems with independent and identically distributed ( i.i.d. ) multi-state components. With the assumption of independence of component lifetimes at different state levels, transformation formulas of multi-state survival signatures of different sizes are established through the use of equivalent systems and a generalized triangle rule for order statistics from several independent and non-identical distributions. The results obtained facilitate stochastic comparisons of multi-state coherent or mixed systems with different numbers of i.i.d. multi-state components. Specific examples are finally presented to illustrate the transformation formulas established here, and also their use in comparing systems of different sizes.