A New Solution Algorithm for the Multistate Minimal Cut Problem

Abstract

Reliability evaluation is a useful tool for network performance demonstration, and therefore has become an increasingly relevant task in network design and operation. The multistate minimal cut (called d-MC for short) method is a popular algorithm for reliability evaluation of multistate flow networks. This article focuses on d-MC problem, and presents some new results to improve its solution. Grounded on the newly obtained results, an algorithm is proposed to find d-MCs, together with discussions on its time complexity that compares favorably with the existing methods. An illustration of the presented algorithm is provided by solving a simple example. Furthermore, numerical experiments and a case study are conducted to demonstrate the advantage and the utility of the proposed algorithm, respectively.