2000 Volume 51 Issue 5 Pages 436-444
A consecutive-k-out-of-n : F system is an ordered sequence of n components. This system fails if, and only if, at least the k consecutive components fail. The optimal assignment problem in linear consecutive-k-out-of-n : F system is to determine which assignment (optimal assignment) has the largest system reliability in all the assignments of components when all components don't necessarily have the same failure probability. In this paper, we propose two kinds of GA. The first GA considers all of the assignments of components and transfers them to chromosomes using ordinal representation directly. The second GA considers only the assignments of components holding necessary conditions for optimal assignment and transfers them using a revised ordinal representation. Some numerical experiments will show that the second GA is most useful of the two GAs and another approximation method.
