Reliability Optimization

Reliability optimization aims at maximizing system reliability and related metrics, while minimizing the cost allocated to maximize the reliability and respecting other design constraints like weight and volume. It has been an active research domain since the 1960s, and various optimization problems have been formulated and solution techniques proposed. In this contribution, we briefly recall the evolution of the approaches to reliability optimization from the early analytical ones for simple systems to the current advanced computational and empirical techniques addressing more practical problems. Much of this evolution is the result of the efforts by the researchers and experts of the Reliability Society.