Components Assignment Problem for Multi-Source Multi-Sink Flow Networks with Reliability and Budget Constraints

System reliability optimization problem of multi-source multi-sink flow network is defined by searching the optimal components that maximize the reliability and minimize the total assignment cost. Therefore, a genetic-based approach is proposed to solve the components assignment problem under budget constraint. The mathematical model of the optimization problem is presented and solved by the proposed genetic-based approach. The proposed approach is based on determining the optimal set of lower boundary points that maximize the system reliability such that the total assignment cost does not exceed the specified budget. Finally, to evaluate our approach, we applied it to various network examples with different numbers of available components; two-source two-sink network and three-source two-sink network.