A maintenance design of connected-(r,s)-out-of-(m,n):F system using simulated annealing

The purpose of this paper is to present an optimization scheme that aims at minimizing the expected cost per unit time. This study considers a linear connected-(r,s)-out-of-(m,n):F lattice system whose components are ordered like the elements of a linear (m,n)-matrix. We assume that all components are in the state 1 (operating) or 0 (failed) and identical and s-independent. The system fails whenever at least one connected (r,s)-submatrix of failed components occurs. To find the optimal threshold of maintenance intervention, we use a simulated annealing algorithm for the cost optimization procedure. The expected cost per unit time is obtained by Monte Carlo simulation.