A bat algorithm for the redundancy allocation problem

• Published in: Engineering optimization Vol. 48; no. 5; pp. 900 - 910
• Main Authors: Talafuse, T.P., Pohl, E.A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis 03.05.2016; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Algorithms; Allocations; bat algorithm; combinatorial optimization; Computation; Design engineering; Heuristic; Heuristic methods; Optimization; Optimization algorithms; Redundancy; redundancy allocation; Reliability engineering; series-parallel system
• ISSN: 0305-215X; 1029-0273
• DOI: 10.1080/0305215X.2015.1076402

This article uses a recently developed bat algorithm (BA) meta-heuristic optimization method to solve the reliability redundancy allocation problem (RAP). The RAP is a well-known NP-hard problem which has been the subject of much prior work, generally of a restricted form where each component must consist of identical components in parallel to make computations tractable. Meta-heuristic methods overcome this limitation and allow for larger instances to be solved for a more general case where different components can be placed in parallel. The BA has not yet been used in reliability design, as it was a method initially designed for continuous problems. A BA is devised and tested on a well-known suite of problems from the literature. It is shown that the BA is competitive with the best known heuristics for redundancy allocation.