Spare Optimization Based on Renewal Process

An optimal model for determining minimum-cost spare number for systems with components connected in series where the failure time of components follow any general distribution is presented. The component availability with a certain number of spares is derived through renewal process theory and the system availability is obtained with system reliability analysis method. The object of the optimization problem is to minimize the total spare cost of the system under the requirement of specified system availability. Genetic algorithms are used to find the optimal amount of spares for each component. Finally, an illustrative example is given.