System reliability optimization considering uncertainty: Minimization of a coefficient of variation measure

System reliability optimization models considering uncertainty are reviewed, and a new formulation is proposed to minimize the coefficient of variation of the system reliability estimate. The redundancy allocation problem can be described as the selection of the components and system configuration to optimize some objective function(s) without violating system related constraints. In this paper, we propose a new formulation to minimize the coefficient of variation of the system reliability estimate with respect to a minimum system reliability constraint and other system level constraints. The problem can then be converted into an equivalent integer programming problem and solved for those problems where mixing components is not allowed.