Reliability analysis of multistate systems by means of a modified generating function
Journal of Information Processing and Cybernetics
The ant colony optimization meta-heuristic
New ideas in optimization
A Graph-based Ant system and its convergence
Future Generation Computer Systems
HAS-SOP: Hybrid Ant System for the Sequential Ordering Problem
HAS-SOP: Hybrid Ant System for the Sequential Ordering Problem
Ant Colony Optimization
A proof of convergence for Ant algorithms
Information Sciences—Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal
A new hybrid heuristic approach for solving large traveling salesman problem
Information Sciences—Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal
Ant colony system with communication strategies
Information Sciences—Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal
Exchange strategies for multiple Ant Colony System
Information Sciences: an International Journal
An analysis of communication policies for homogeneous multi-colony ACO algorithms
Information Sciences: an International Journal
Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics
Information Sciences: an International Journal
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This paper addresses the heterogeneous redundancy allocation problem in multi-state series-parallel reliability structures with the objective to minimize the total cost of system design satisfying the given reliability constraint and the consumer load demand. The demand distribution is presented as a piecewise cumulative load curve and each subsystem is allowed to consist of parallel redundant components of not more than three types. The system uses binary capacitated components chosen from a list of available products to provide redundancy so as to increase system performance and reliability. The components are characterized by their feeding capacity, reliability and cost. A system that consists of elements with different reliability and productivity parameters has the capacity strongly dependent upon the selection of constituent components. A binomial probability based method to compute exact system reliability index is suggested. To analyze the problem and suggest an optimal/near-optimal system structure, an ant colony optimization algorithm has been presented. The solution approach consists of a series of simple steps as used in early ant colony optimization algorithms dealing with other optimization problems and offers straightforward analysis. Four multi-state system design problems have been solved for illustration. Two problems are taken from the literature and solved to compare the algorithm with the other existing methods. The other two problems are based upon randomly generated data. The results show that the method can be appealing to many researchers with regard to the time efficiency and yet without compromising over the solution quality.