Reliability Analysis of a Mechanical System with 3 Out of 5 Subsystems

Optimization of a redundancy allocation problem designed specifically for systems with $$k{\text{-out-of-}}n {\text{subsystems}}$$ has been the motive of this work. The main motive is to select the components and redundancy levels to maximize system reliability given system-level constraints. With cost and weight as constraints, 3 out of 5 subsystems have been optimized in the present study for maximizing the reliability of a mechanical system. Component reliabilities in every phase are considered to be unknowns in this model. Evolutionary and Generalized Reduced Gradient method (GRG nonlinear solver) in Excel has been applied here to find the reliability of each component reliabilities, phase reliabilities, and to maximize reliability of system. A comparative study has been done using the methodology in the present paper with the methods already used by the other authors for the similar systems.