A redundancy allocation problem with the choice of redundancy strategies by a memetic algorithm

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient algorithm based on memetic algorithm (MA) for a redundancy allocation problem without component mixing (RAPCM) in a series-parallel system when the redundancy strategy can be chosen for individual subsystems. Majority of the solution methods for the general RAPCM assume that the type of a redundancy strategy for each subsystem is pre-determined and known a priori. In general, active redundancy has traditionally received greater attention; however, in practice both active and cold-standby redundancies may be used within a particular system design. The choice of the redundancy strategy then becomes an additional decision variable. Thus, the problem is to select the best redundancy strategy, component and redundancy level for each subsystem in order to maximize the system reliability under system-level constraints. Due to its complexity and NP-hardness, it is so difficult to optimally solve such a problem by using traditional optimization tools. To validate the performance of the proposed MA in terms of solution quality, a number of test problems are examined and the robustness of this algorithm is then discussed. Finally, the related results are reported and it is shown that the proposed MA performs well.