No abstract

No abstract

-This paper combines the universal generating function UGF with harmony search (HSO) meta-heuristic optimization method to solve a preventive maintenance (PM) problem for series-parallel system. In this work, we consider the situation where system and its components have several ranges of performance levels. Such systems are called multi-state systems (MSS). To enhance system availability or (reliability), possible schedule preventive maintenance actions are performed to equipments and affect strongly the effective age. The MSS measure is related to the ability of the system to satisfy the demand. The objective is to develop an algorithm to generate an optimal sequence of maintenance actions providing system working with the desired level of availability or (reliability) during its lifetime with minimal maintenance cost rate. To evaluate the MSS system availability, a fast method based on UGF is suggested. The harmony search approach can be applied as an optimization technique and adapted to this PM optimization problem.

The most important phase in many industrial power applications is the design problem. Usually the demand increases randomly with time in the form of a cumulative demand curve. To adapt the power system capacity to the demand, new power architecture is predicted. To build this latter, the reliability optimization plays an important role to find the realizable power system architecture. This chapter describes and uses different meta-heuristics optimization methods to solve the redundancy optimization problem for multi-state series-parallel power systems. The authors consider the case where redundant power components are chosen to achieve a desirable level of reliability. The power components of the system are characterized by their cost, capacity, and reliability. The proposed meta-heuristics seek the optimal architectures of series-parallel power systems in which a multiple choice of components are allowed from a list of products available in the market. The approach has the advantage of allowing power components with different parameters to be allocated in power systems. To allow fast reliability estimation, a Moment Generating Function (MGF) method is applied. An illustrative example is presented.

No abstract