Reliability Optimization of Complex Systems through C-SOMGA

Abstract

In this paper, three problems from the field of reliability engineering are considered. The first problem is a nonlinear constraint optimization problem. The problem is to determine the minimum cost of a life support system in a space capsule subject to the constraints on reliability of the system. The objective is to find the minimum cost of the system as well as maximum reliability. The second problem is to determine the minimum cost of a complex bridge network system with constraints on system reliability. The objective is to minimize the cost and maximize reliability at the same time. The third problem is a discrete optimization problem. This problem is to determine the optimal number of redundancies in a multistage mixed system so that the reliability of the system can be maximized. Three cases of this problem are considered. All the problems are solved using Self Organizing Migrating Genetic Algorithm (C-SOMGA) which is a recently published algorithm for obtaining the global optimal solution of constrained optimization problems. C- SOMGA is a hybridized genetic algorithm inspired by the features of Self Organizing Migrating Algorithm (SOMA) as well as Simple binary GA. The results obtained by C-SOMGA are compared with the existing published results in order to exhibit the roboutness of C-SOMGA for solving reliability engineering problems.