Evolution explains the way the natural world changes over time. It can also explain changes in the artificial world, such as the way ideas replicate, alter, and merge. This analogy has led to a family of related computer procedures called evolutionary algorithms. These algorithms are being used...

A redundancy allocation problem (RAP) is a well-known NP-hard problem that involves the selection of elements and redundancy levels to maximize the system reliability under various system-level constraints. In many practical design situations, reliability apportionment is complicated because of...