Component Importance-Driven Reliability Optimization for Linear Consecutive k out of n Systems

Abstract

Importance measures in reliability systems are used to identify weak single component or multiple components in contributing to proper functioning of the system. They can be used to analyze the structure optimization with component reliabilities for reconfigurable systems, and solve the system optimization problem for a kind of component assignment problem for the consecutive k out of n systems. In reconfigurable systems, the system structure can be changed by reordering the components. The optimal structure can be determined for any specific combination of system components. For the change of the reliability of specific components, the importance of the corresponding components and the optimal system structure can be found. The relationships between reliability allocation and the importance are studied by building the reliability of the optimal system structure as a function of component reliability. At last, a numerical example is used to demonstrate the proposed method.