A general column generation algorithm applied to system reliability optimization problems

A general column generation approach for system reliability optimization is described and demonstrated. In previous years, a tremendous amount of study has been concentrated on system reliability optimization and column generation as a technique to optimize large scale problems. This paper can be considered as a continuation and integration of these two topics. It presents new ideas for formulating the allocation problems in reliability systems and opens a new area for application of column generation. We present the reformulation of problems including the redundancy allocation problem, reliability allocation problem and redundancy-reliability allocation problem. Then, we describe how the column generation algorithm can be used to solve these problems. This approach obtains the best found solutions for example problems while requiring a small fraction of computational efforts required by other methods.