Abstract
The reliability allocation problem (RAP) is concerned with how to optimally allocate reliability to each component in a critical system to meet the desired system reliability goal while ensuring that the system conforms to a set of other requirements related to, for example, cost and performance. It is a crucial design problem during any new product development. The RAP has been solved for diverse types of systems, including but not limited to series, parallel, series-parallel, and parallel-series systems. However little work has been done to address RAPs for systems subject to dynamic and dependent behaviors. The goal of this thesis is to formulate and solve the RAP for complex systems subject to the dynamic standby sparing behavior. A software tool with a user-friendly Graphical User Interface is developed in Matlab, which implements the genetic algorithm to solve two types of RAPs balancing the system reliability and cost requirements. Multiple example systems are provided to illustrate the application of the proposed reliability evaluation and optimization methods involved in the solution to RAPs.