An Adjusted Water Cycle Algorithm for Solving Reliability-redundancy Allocation Problems with Cold-standby Components

Abstract

Reliability-redundancy allocation problem (RRAP) is one of the most practical methods used to improve system reliability through performing a tradeoff between reliability and redundancy levels of components. RRAP aims to maximize the overall system reliability by creating a balance between the reliabilities of components and the number of redundant components in each subsystem. In RRAP, redundant components operate in a predetermined order under a redundancy strategy. In this paper, cold standby redundancy strategy is considered for the redundant components. Besides, a penalty guided water cycle algorithm is adjusted for solving the problem. The proposed algorithm is implemented on two famous benchmark problems to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. Numerical results reveal the superiority of the proposed solution method compared to previous studies.