Component reassignment of two balanced linear consecutive k-out-of-n systems

Balanced systems are widely used in the aerospace and military services featuring the symmetry structure with spatially distributed components, which increasingly becomes an important issue in the research field of the reliability theory. This paper studies two balanced linear consecutive k-out-of-n (Lin/con/k/n), which is operating if at least k components in each sector are working. First, based on the proposed balanced system, proposes the balance condition. Second, considering the gamma degradation process of components, the optimization model is established to find the optimal component reassignment scheme and the reassignment time for maximizing the lower boundary of the system reliability during the required mission time. Third, the component pre-assignment rule is given to optimize reliability differences between two sectors. Fourth, the delta-importance (DI) based heuristics are developed to solve the model The analytical results and the numerical experiment illustrate the efficiency of models, pre-assignment rule and the solving method, shedding light on making design and maintenance strategy of balanced systems.