Article ID: | iaor20162888 |
Volume: | 63 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 335 |
End Page Number: | 345 |
Publication Date: | Jun 2016 |
Journal: | Naval Research Logistics (NRL) |
Authors: | Li Xiaohu, Fang Rui |
Keywords: | simulation, allocation: resources, combinatorial optimization |
This article studies coherent systems of heterogenous and statistically dependent components' lifetimes. We present a sufficient and necessary condition for a stochastically longer system lifetime resulted by allocating a single active redundancy. For exchangeable components' lifetimes, allocating the redundancy to the component with more minimal path sets is proved to produce a more reliable system, and for systems with stochastic arrangement increasing components' lifetimes and symmetric structure with respect to two components, allocating the redundancy to the weaker one brings forth a larger reliability. Several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results as well. 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 335–345, 2016