A New Multiple Objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Reliability Optimization of Series-Parallel Systems

Abstract

A new multiple objective evolutionary algorithm is proposed for reliability optimization of series-parallel systems. This algorithm uses a genetic algorithm based on rank selection and elitist reinsertion and a modified constraint handling method. Because genetic algorithms are appropriate for high-dimensional stochastic problems with many nonlinearities or discontinuities, they are suited for solving reliability design problems. The developed algorithm mainly differs from other multiple objective evolutionary algorithms in the crossover operation performed and in the fitness assignment. In the crossover step, several offspring are created through multi-parent recombination. Thus, the mating pool contains a great amount of diverse solutions. The disruptive nature of the proposed type of crossover, called subsystem rotation crossover, encourages the exploration of the search space. The paper presents a multiple objective formulation of the redundancy allocation problem. The three objective functions that are simultaneously optimized are the maximization of system reliability, the minimization of system cost, and the minimization of system weight. The proposed algorithm was thoroughly tested and a performance comparison of the proposed algorithm against one well-known multiple objective evolutionary algorithms that currently exists shows that the algorithm has a better performance when solving multiple objective redundant allocation problems.