Title: System design optimisation involving phased missions

Authors: Dovile Astapenko, Lisa M. Bartlett

Addresses: Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK. ' Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK

Abstract: The performance of a phased mission is defined as a succession of non-overlapping phases that constitute towards a continuous mission. The focus of this paper is to develop a method to construct an optimal design structure for a phased mission system when available resources are restricted and to ensure a minimal system failure probability throughout the whole mission. The implemented optimisation method employs fault tree analysis to represent the causes of failure in the system for each phase. Binary decision diagrams are used to quantify the failure probability of each phase and the whole mission, and a single objective genetic algorithm is chosen to solve the optimisation problem. Analysis of the optimisation process of a military vessel design during a training mission is presented and the obtained results are discussed.

Keywords: phased missions; optimisation; fault tree analysis; binary decision diagrams; genetic algorithms; GAs; system design; optimal design; failure causes; military vessels; vessel design; training missions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRS.2009.028580

International Journal of Reliability and Safety, 2009 Vol.3 No.4, pp.331 - 344

Received: 04 Apr 2008
Accepted: 27 Jan 2009
Published online: 19 Sep 2009 *

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