A No Speeds and Coefficients PSO approach to reliability optimization problems

Nowadays we assist to the global extension of reliability optimization problems from the design phase of systems and sub-systems to the design and operational phases, not only of systems and sub-systems, but also of complex industrial plants. Essentially the reliability optimization problems are dealing with the fine trade-off between two contradictory requirements, the maximization of system's reliability and the minimization of system's cost. The paper is investigating the suitability of the No Speeds and Coefficients Particle Swarm Optimization (NSC-PSO) method for solving reliability optimization problems by approaching a set of test problems comprising two known Redundancy Allocation Problem (RAP) case studies, one Fault Tree Optimization (FTO) case study and one Event Tree Optimization (ETO) case study. The FTO and ETO case studies have only illustrative purposes, while the RAP case studies are used for comparison between the numerical results produced by NSC-PSO method and the numerical results reported by other optimization methods published in the literature. The comparisons prove that NSC-PSO is a competitive optimization method for solving reliability optimization problems. The NSC-PSO algorithm is one of the robust optimization methodologies in the procedure of solving the reliability optimization problems.