Reliability Analysis of a Novel Structure in an Automatic Sorting System

Xiu-fang SUN , Li ZHENG

1 Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistic Management, Beijing Union University, Beijing, P.R.China,
2 Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R.China
Gdtxiufang@buu.edu.cn)
Abstract -

this node, the actuator will eject the object to the channel
to the corresponding package box.

Reliability and safety is very important for

logistic equipments especially sorting system. In this paper a

novel structure of automatic sorting system is designed

Control P3rt

based on Double 2 vote 2 Redundancy (D2V2R) structure.

By using this structure,

the reliability of the system is

enhanced comparing with traditional simplex system and

duplex system. Analytical results based on basic reliability

OUIPUI

Sub-systcm II I
I Output Comparison II

I Output Comparison I
I

structures.

Reliability, Logistic equipments, Automatic

sorting system, Double 2 vote 2 Redundancy

Controller I I
IB

Con;:lIcr

Field Node

III

IChannel I I
Inp
ut

'-.

IA

Objt

II

Input

Chonnel B

Sensor IB
,.--"'1

SensoriA

Bus

UA

lIB

L_ .:

II

JI
II

I Channel I I ,Channel : I
Output

....

IA

Actuator I A

... ---- --- ... - ____ r1 ---- ...

'----

Output
IB

AC1WIIlor

L-_-:

......

Field
odeN

IB
Belt Com'eyer

c.,

Fig. I. Structure of the automatic sorting system of D2V2R

The control part of the system consists of four

controllers. Each filed node consists of two input channels
with sensors and two output channels with actuators. Four
controllers are designed in two subsystems which each
subsystem consists of two controllers. The output of each
subsystem is active and available when the two
controllers' outputs are same. The control part's output is
selected by the output switch unit according the status of
two subsystems and then transferred to the active actuator
of the field node by executive controller.
TABLEl
SYSTEM FAILURE CONDITIONS
System I

II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND PRINCIPLE

The automatic sorting system consists of one control
part, a dual-net field bus and N field nodes. The structure
of the automatic sorting system is shown as Fig. 1. The
reliable design method is applied both in the control part
and field nodes.
The control part of the automatic sorting system is
designed with the D2V2R structure to enhance its
reliability and safety simultaneously. The operation flow
of this basic system is as following. First, the belt
conveyer transfers an object to across the sorting nodes.
Secondly, the sensor of the field node detects and
recognizes the object. If the object is needed to process in

System II

Output

IA

IB

ITA

ITA

Failure

o
o

(%)
o

25

25

50

25

I
o

Failure
Module

50

o
o

50

75

25
50

50

75

50
75

75
100

This work is supported by The Natural Science Research Fund of Beijing Union University (No: 2K2009576).

978-1-4244-6484-5/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

I ConIl'OlIcr

Synch

Dual Net Field BIL' (CAN 2.0B)

I. INTRODUCTION
Automatic sorting system has been seen as the main
contributor for logistic sorting operation because of the
efficiency it has brought for material and product sorting
and distribution process. Nevertheless, with the
complexity improving in sorting system, more and more
sensors and actuator devices are equipped in the system.
This trend has great influence on the system reliability
because more devices cause more possible of failure.
Failure will effect the transaction in many large sorting
system such as airport baggage sorting, mail distributed
center and big manufactory center [1] [2]. High speed, low
error rate and automated operation are basic requirements
for these applications.
To improve the reliability a novel structure of
automatic sorting system is designed based on Double 2
vote 2 Redundancy (D2V2R) structure. The D2V2R
structure has been widely used in aircraft, railway, power
station, petroleum and chemical industrial. The D2V2R
structure can improve system reliability by using
redundant strategy and improve system safety by using 2
vote 2 method. In this paper, a novel realization of the
D2V2R is given basing on field bus communication.
Based on the structure the reliability is analyzed and
compared with traditional sorting system which using
simplex structure and duplex structure.

Swilch Unit

SUbsyslc:m I

analyzing theory are also given for systems using these

Keywords -

Exec:ulivc ContrOller

955

The reliability of systems and components, when

they operate correctly at t, is a conditional probability for
the correct operation between to and T [4l. The system
reliability is defined in (2).

The sensors and actuators equipped in this system are

smart devices which have ability to connect to field bus
network CAN2.0B. The measurement data, executive
command data and devices supervisory data are
transferred on this data bus link. The synchronization data
of the two subsystems are transferred by the high speed
synchronization bus as shown in Fig. 1.
To evaluate the reliability of the control part in this
sorting system, only one field node is used in the
reliability analyzing process.
According to the double 2 vote 2 redundancy
structure shown in Fig. 1. The whole system output failure
conditions can be analyzed as table I. The data in the table
shows the system output will failure only when there is
fault in both two subsystems. The system can remain
normal in the condition the failure module percentages get
up to 50%.

R(t) = e -At

Reliability of system is the ability of system to

complete stated functions under stated condition and
stated time limit. Reliability is a qualitative concept. But
in practice it always needs to use quantificational
reliability to indicate level of reliability. The reliability of
system, when it operates correctly at to, is a conditional
probability for the correct operation between to and t. It is
defined to be Rs(t). The reliability of series system that
consists of n modules is defined in (3).
n

R,(t) IT R;(t)
;=1

The reliability of parallel system that consists of n

modules is defined in (4).

To analyze the reliability of the automatic sorting

system the basic reliability theory is used to evaluate its
performance.

Rp(t) 1- IT[l- R;(t)]

n

MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) is the expected time

that a system will operate before the first failure. This is a
useful parameter to specify the quality of a system. MTTF
is evaluated in the integral of reliability. It is shown in (5).

Before analysis, a number of assumptions which

define the valid states and the possible transitions between
them have to be made [3l. The assumptions used to
redundant protective devices redundant protective devices
are:
1) Each unit has 2 states: failed and good.
2) All units of a system are good at time O.
3) Repair of a unit is to like-new and does not damage
anything.
4) All failure and repair (hazard) rates are constant in
time, and unchanged by repeated failure and repair of
units.
5) No two units fail or complete repair at exactly the
same time (no common-cause transitions).
6) Failure and repair events are all mutually statistically
independent.
7) Both units of a duplex pair have the same failure rates
and same repair rates.
8) Concurrent repair can take place when more than one
unit is failed.
9) Switch units and comparison units are always
working.
Notation
A
failure rate, failure rate of unit
11 repair rate, repair rate of unit
R(t) reliability function
A(t) availability function

MTTF

;f

i
Vl

r R(t)d(t)

(5)

.!

OJ

Fig.2a. Serial and parallel structure of the D2V2R system

Assume the reliability of different elements is same.

The elements include sensor, main controller and actuator.
Assume the reliability of comparison unit and switch unit
is 1. Assume the element without redundant is not
reparable during the automatic sorting system is running.
Assume the repair rate of the element with redundant is
0.9 and it can be replaced online.
According to the serial and parallel structure of the
system configuration the reliability of these three
structures can be calculated as following [5l.
For simplex system shown in Fig. 2b, the reliability
of each controller is as following

The failure rate A is the most important element to

evaluate the reliability, availability, and MTTF (Mean
Time to Failure). The failure rate is represented in (1) as
the inverse of the operating time T of components.

The availability of systems is the probability to

operate a task correctly on the instance of time t. As it
were, it is the time ratio for the system to be operated
correctly. It has a close relation with repair rate. If a failed
simplex system is not repaired then its availability state
transition diagram is identical to its reliability state
transition diagram in Fig. la, and A(t) =R(t). [3J
For calculate the reliability of the D2V2R system
shown in Fig. 1. Its serial and parallel structure can be
shown as Fig. 2a, 2b and 2c.

The Calculation of Failure Rate

(4)

A. Assumptions and Notation

(3)

Ill. RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

B.

(2)

(1)

956

As the Fig. 3 shown, under the same condition, the

reliability of the system is much higher than simplex
system and also the duplex system. The system is
believable.
In practical application, because of the easy
changeable of the components in D2V2R system, the
reliability is even higher than the irreparable condition.

(6)

The reliability of the simplex system can be calculated

as
RSimplex (t) =Rsensor (t) X Rcantroller (t) X Roctuator (t)

(7)

For duplex system shown in Fig. 2c, the reliability

can be calculated base on the serial model of input part,
controller part and executive part. Among these three
parts the controller part is base on a parallel model of two
hot standby controllers [5] [6]. Then the reliability of main
controller is as following

RDuplex (t)

R"nwr (t)x [1- (1- Rcontroller(t))2 Jx R actuator (t)

1.20

,q

'ii

(8)

For D2V2R system shown in Fig. 2a, sensors, main

controllers and actuator parts have redundant
configuration. The reliability can be calculated as
following

RD2v2R (t)

RIN (t)RMC (t)RoUT (t)

(9)

(t) r

(10)

-+--R_Sillgle

1.00

-R_Dllplcx

0.80

-+-R_D2V2R

0.60
0.40
0.20
0.00
0

2000

Tilllc

(I)

RMc(t)

1 - [1 -

R"",or

1-(1- R

Sl/bsystem

(12)

ROUT (t) 1- [1- Ractl/ator (t) t

Single

10000

In this paper, an automatic sorting control system

with D2V2R structure is proposed in order to improve the
reliability of the sorting system especially for busy sorting
applications. And an applied reliability model for D2V2R
control system is created based on basic reliability model.
Reliability analysis results shows that the reliability of the
proposed D2V2R system is higher than that of the
simplex system and the duplex system described in this
paper.

(11)

Controller
s

8000

V. CONCLUSION

Rsubsystem (t) Rcol1trolle/

==

6000

(Hours)

Fig.3. Reliability model of three control systems

Where
R IN

4000

1I------[E!i
=:J
I

(13)

Actuator

Fig.2b. Reliability model of simplex system

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Xiufang SUN Author thanks Dr Ze LIU and Ms Ping
WANG's part work in the development of the structure.

Fig.2e. Reliability model of duplex system

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the table II.
TABLE II

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2V2R

RD

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1000

0.74081822

0.811316395

0.96714146

2000

0.54881164

0.648294308

0.891311127

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3000

0.40656966

0.511945108

0.796429059

4000

0.30119421

0.400491906

0.696761408

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5000

0.22313016

0.310925037

0.600423597

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6000

0.16529889

0.239879823

0.511670468

AVT2 MR (all voting triple modular redundancy) and

7000

0.12245643

0.184102794

0.432383863

8000

0.09071795

0.140673703

0.363030829

9000

0.06720551

0.107087303

0.303274051

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10000

0.04978707

0.081258498

0.252354925

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439 - 444

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957