OPTIMIZATION BASED DETERMINATION OF THE SET OF CONTINUOUS-STATE COMPONENTS CRITICAL TO THE MECHANICAL SYSTEM STATE

Abstract

This paper proposes a new approach to determining the set of the most critical continuous-state components in continuous-state mechanical systems. Unlike traditional importance measures, which determine the criticality of individual components, our approach provides selection of the entire set of critical components. In addition, it enables determination of the minimal budget for achieving full or any required performance level of the mechanical system. We start from the continuum structure function and the system state definition through minimal cut sets. The problem defined in this paper is formulated as a determination of a set of components whose states maximize the system performance level under the budget constraint. Further, we prove that the solution of the formulated problem can be obtained based on the solution to a weighted minimal hitting set problem. The proposed approach is applied to a group of benchmark instances and the obtained results are compared to components’ rankings obtained by using traditional importance measures.