Continuous Multistate Structure Functions

Usually, systems and components are described as being in one of two modes, "on" or "off." Such systems are described using binary structure functions. More realistically, components can be in more than two states-for example, there can be partially failed or partially operating modes. In fact, the system state can be described by continuously many values if percentage effort or percentage capacity is recorded. This paper discusses the structure functions of such continuous multistate systems and obtains a decomposition of these functions into more elementary functions.