RELIABILITY ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION OF EQUAL LOAD-SHARING K-OUT-OF-N PHASED-MISSION SYSTEMS

There are many studies on k-out-of-n systems, load-sharing systems (LSS) and phased-mission systems (PMS); however, little attention has been given to load-sharing k-out-of-n systems with phased-mission requirements. This paper considers equal loadsharing k-out-of-n phased-mission systems with identical components. A method is proposed for the phased-mission reliability analysis of the studied systems based on the applicable failure path (AFP). A modified universal generating function (UGF) is used in the AFP-searching algorithm because of its efficiency. The tampered failure rate load-sharing model for the exactly k-out-of-n: F system is introduced and integrated into the method. With the TFR model, the systems with arbitrary load-dependent component failure distributions can be analyzed. According to the time and space complexity analysis, this method is particularly suitable for systems with small k-values. Two applications of the method are introduced in this paper. 1) A genetic algorithm (GA) based on the method is presented to solve the operational scheduling problem of systems with independent submissions. Two theorems are provided to solve the problem under some special conditions. 2) The method is used to select the optimal number of components to make the system reliable and robust.