Coherent System Reliability Using a PCA Based Multi-Response Optimization

A functional package of components in a system can be represented as a module [1]. For a modular coherent binary system (MCBS), a robust design of experiment is proposed in this paper. Optimization of system reliability in a design phase could be attained by simultaneous optimization of organizational patterns of modules and module reliabilities. On the other hand, among all the methods for multi-response optimization, the weighted principal component analysis (WPCA)-based approach has shown high efficiency, since it encompasses all the possible correlations between response variables without increasing the computational complexity. By applying WPCA, the original responses (cause-specific reliabilities) are transformed to a set of uncorrelated principal components (PCs) and a multi-response performance index (MPI) is obtained to maximize the system reliability. However, eigenvectors obtained from WPCA are not unique. To solve this problem, the proposed indexing method will determine a unique optimal solution for MCS reliability optimization.