PROPOSAL OF AN OPTIMAL REDUNDANCY AND RELIABILITY ALLOCATION APPROACH FOR DESIGNING COMPLEX SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT Problems of optimal reliability and redundancy allocation are not new. However, the literature describes two isolated situations, either when redundancy allocation is the target and the reliability metrics of the components are known, or focusing on the reliability allocation, that demands the metrics to be known in advance and the use of some optimization approach. In the present paper, we consider a combined situation, i.e., when both situations must be considered together. To guide the allocation process, we developed a cost function that considers the costs of acquisition, development and/or improvement as a function of monetary effort, along with the reliability target and expected failure costs. The results considering two classical test problems in the literature demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed approach to deal with similar situations.