Co-optimization of state dependent loading and mission abort policy in heterogeneous warm standby systems

This paper models and optimizes a 1-out-of-N: G heterogeneous warm standby system subject to state-dependent component loading and mission abort policies. For circumstances where a system's survival may have a higher priority than continuing a specified mission due to cost or safety reasons, when a certain incident or malfunction condition is met based on a predefined decision rule, the mission objective is aborted and a rescue procedure is performed for system survival. The mission abort policy implemented can affect the system performance significantly. In addition, load levels of system components affect their performances (e.g., productivity) and time-to-failure distributions, and further affect the overall system performance. This paper makes new contributions by formulating and solving a co-optimization problem that finds the optimal combination of mission abort and component loading policies, maximizing the mission success probability while providing a desired level of system survivability. As demonstrated through examples, the co-optimization results can facilitate optimal decisions on effective and safe operations management of warm standby systems.