Series-parallel Systems Design: Reliability Allocation
Résumé
Reliability optimization is one of the most important steps in industrial systems design. We consider a system composed of different technologies, with the same functionality, in parallel. We assume that each technology is composed of components in series. The purpose is to allocate the reliability of each component in order to minimize the total cost, with a minimal reliability level for the system. In most of the studies, components reliability is assumed to be a decision variable which may be any real value between zero and one. In reality, only a finite number of components, with the same function in a system, are available on the market. Then, components reliability must be chosen among a finite set of values. In our previous works, we proposed a decision tool for the design of parallel-series systems. We present in this paper a pseudopolynomial algorithm for the reliability allocation problem in series-parallel structures. Associating this algorithm with the previous one, we are able to solve reliability and redundancy allocation problems in more complex systems like series-parallel-series and parallel-series-parallel structures.
Nous considérons un système composé de différentes technologies, ayant la même fonction, en parallèle. Une technologie est composée de composants en série. Le but est d'allouer une fiabilité à chaque composant pour minimiser le coût total. Ces fiabilités doivent être choisies parmi un ensemble de valeurs fini. Nous présentons dans cet article un algorithme pseudopolynomial pour le problème d'allocation de fiabilité dans les systèmes série-parallèle.