An Improved Method for Reliability Evaluation of Two-Terminal Multistate Networks Based on State Space Decomposition

This article presents an improved state space decomposition (SSD) method for reliability evaluation of multistate networks. We observe that the decomposition process of the existing SSD is a sequential decomposition process. However, the SSD has the basis of parallel operations, as the decomposition process from each unspecified state is independent of each other. In addition, the existing SSD methods applied heuristic to select a proper minimal path vector (d-MP). When there is a tie during the process, the tie is broken arbitrarily. However, we find that different d-MPs with same function value of the current heuristic affect the efficiency of the decomposition procedure. Based on these observations, an improved SSD method is developed for reliability evaluation of multistate networks. First, a parallel mechanism is proposed and incorporated into the SSD algorithm. Second, several improved heuristics, namely R1, R2, R3, and R4, are developed to select a proper d-MP. The experimental results show that the proposed SSD method can improve the efficiency for reliability evaluation of multistate networks, which provides the reliability engineers and facility managers a more powerful tool for the design and maintenance of more complex multistate networks.

Automated summary

This article introduces an improved state space decomposition method for reliability evaluation of multistate networks, which enhances efficiency by integrating parallel operations and developing improved heuristics. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SSD method can provide reliability engineers and facility managers with a more powerful tool for designing and maintaining complex multistate networks.