Abstract
This article uses a recently developed bat algorithm (BA) meta-heuristic optimization method to solve the reliability redundancy allocation problem (RAP). The RAP is a well-known NP-hard problem which has been the subject of much prior work, generally of a restricted form where each component must consist of identical components in parallel to make computations tractable. Meta-heuristic methods overcome this limitation and allow for larger instances to be solved for a more general case where different components can be placed in parallel. The BA has not yet been used in reliability design, as it was a method initially designed for continuous problems. A BA is devised and tested on a well-known suite of problems from the literature. It is shown that the BA is competitive with the best known heuristics for redundancy allocation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.