Topology Optimisation of Repairable Flow Networks and Reliability Networks

This chapter discusses a topology optimisation algorithm for achieving a maximum throughput flow or a maximum production availability, within a specified budget for building the flow network. The algorithm incorporates an efficient search of the space of alternatives, based on combining the branch and bound method and pruning the full-complexity network. It is considerably faster than algorithms based on a full exhaustive search, which is a significant advantage. At the heart of the optimisation procedure is an algorithm for determining production availability, whose running time is independent of the length of the operational interval, the failure frequencies or the lengths of the repair times.