A hybrid approach for robust design of reliability systems based on cellular evolutionary strategies and interval arithmetic techniques

The robustness of a reliability system design is defined as the maximum size of reliability component deviations from a design that can be made in such a way that the system still meets all defined specifications. This paper proposes an innovative approach based on the use of Cellular Evolutionary Strategies (CES) and Interval Arithmetic (IA) to obtain robust reliability system design. CES are a recent approach that combines the Evolution Strategy techniques with concepts from Cellular Automata in order to obtain, by an iterative process, the maximum size of each deviation (optimization problem), while IA is used as a checking technique that guarantee the feasibility of the design. A numerical example applied to a complex system is presented.