Water cycle algorithm for solving the reliability-redundancy allocation problem with a choice of redundancy strategies

Abstract

This paper proposes a new mathematical model for the reliability-redundancy allocation problem (RRAP) with a choice of redundancy strategies. To maximize the reliability of a system, this model chooses the best redundancy strategy from among both active and standby ones for each subsystem. For those with a standby strategy, a continuous time Markov chain model is used to calculate the exact reliability values. In order to solve the proposed mixed-integer non-linear programing model, a powerful evolutionary algorithm, called water cycle algorithm (WCA), is developed and implemented on three famous benchmark problems. Finally, the results of different benchmark problems are compared with those previously reported to show the superiority of the proposed model and the efficiency of WCA.