Redundancy allocation problem of phased-mission system with non-exponential components and mixed redundancy strategy

Abstract The redundancy allocation problem (RAP) has been widely studied, which aims to identify the optimal design to achieve the best system indicators, such as system reliability or availability, under certain constraints. This problem has been studied well in the single phased mission systems. But many practical systems, like the manmade satellites or spacecraft, perform a series of tasks in multiple, consecutive, non-overlapping time durations (phases). For these multi-phased systems, dependencies among the phases need to be fully considered. To address this problem, the RAP of the phased mission systems (PMSs) is studied in this paper. Moreover, in order to improve system reliability as much as possible, the mixed redundancy strategy where both active and cold standby components can be simultaneously used in a subsystem is applied. The non-exponential components, which are more practical, are also considered. The Semi-Markov process (SMP) as well as a numerical approximation method are used to deal with the dynamic non-exponential components. Then, an improved Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to determine the types and quantities of active and cold-standby components in each subsystem to optimize the whole system. At last, the propulsion system in a spacecraft is optimized to illustrate the proposed method.