Minimal Path Sets Seismic Reliability Evaluation of Lifeline Networks with Link and Node Failures

A heuristic minimal path sets method for analyzing seismic reliability of lifeline networks is proposed. For large-scale lifeline networks reliability computation can become prohibitive or inaccurate using the current enumeration methods. Although a few studies have considered both node and link failures, none of these methods has utilized the minimal paths method. This paper proposes a minimal path algorithm to evaluate reliability of relatively large lifeline networks with unreliable nodes and links. As the primary task, the method can deduce all minimal paths of a directed/undirected network. In the algorithm, minimal paths for both nodes and links are traced performing several procedures. The terminal-pair reliability of the network is then evaluated by performing an efficient Monte Carlo simulation as an alternative to exact reliability calculation methods. In terms of computational speed, the results obtained compare well with existing algorithms. The algorithm requires minimum memory storage and minimum user-defined data to represent the topology of a network. A series of case studies illustrate that the method can be used to evaluate reliability of the large-scale lifeline systems subject to node and link failures, efficiently.