Uneven allocation of elements in linear multi-state sliding window system [An article from: European Journal of Operational Research]

This digital document is a journal article from European Journal of Operational Research, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The linear multi-state sliding window system consists of n linearly ordered positions and m statistically independent elements with different characteristics that are to be allocated at these positions. Each element can have different states: from complete failure up to perfect functioning. A performance rate is associated with each state. The system fails if the sum of the performance rates of elements located at any r consecutive positions is lower than a demand w. An algorithm based on the universal generating function method is suggested for determination of the linear multi-state sliding window system reliability. This algorithm can handle cases in which any number of multi-state elements are allocated in the same position while some positions remain empty. It is shown that such uneven allocation provides greater system reliability than the even one. A genetic algorithm is used as optimization tool in order to solve the optimal element allocation problem.