Strength–redundancy allocation problem using artificial bee colony algorithm for multi-state systems

The system reliability optimization design is an indispensable part in the reliability engineering. The traditional reliability–redundancy allocation problem (RRAP) is widely studied and used to optimize the system reliability. However, researchers mainly focused on the optimal redundancy and subsystem reliability strategies, which is relatively blurry in the aspect of giving designers an explicit orientation to improve the system reliability. Therefore, this paper raises a newly-defined reliability-based strength–redundancy allocation problem (SRAP) for multi-state systems based on the load–strength interference model and formulates its corresponding reliability optimization design model with the proposed continuous multi-state system reliability model as the objective function. To obtain the more specific optimal component strength and redundancy strategies, we improve the basic artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm to solve the reliability optimization design model since the SRAP is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. An illustrative example about the reliability optimization design of the solar module is given to demonstrate the availability of the proposed model.