Optimal-system synthesis with reliability constraints (Q1842411)

The author considers a system consisting of \(m\) series-connected reserve subsystems consisting of \(n(i)\), \(i= 1,2,\dots, m\), elements, respectively. Let \(P(x)\) be the probability of system failure in a specified time interval \([0, t]\) for given mean values \(x= (x_ 1,\dots, x_ m)\), and \(f(x)\) a strictly convex differentiable function, which determines, for example, the fabrication cost of a system whose mean times before failure are \(x_ i\), \(i= 1,2,\dots, m\). The author considers a synthesis problem of the form: \(\min\{f(x)\mid P(x)\leq \varepsilon, x\in {\mathcal X}\}\), where \({\mathcal X}= \{x\in \mathbb{R}^ m, x^ 0_ 1\leq x_ i\leq x^ 1_ i, i= 1,2,\dots, m\}\), \(0\leq x^ 0_ i\leq x^ 1_ i< \infty\), \(\varepsilon> 0\). Under suitable assumptions, he reduces the above problem to some problem of convex programming and finds a solution by using the method of the Lagrange function and the Kuhn-Tucker theorem.