Test sequencing problem arising at the design stage for reducing life cycle cost

Previous test sequencing algorithms only consider the execution cost of a test at the application stage. Due to the fact that the placement cost of some tests at the design stage is considerably high compared with the execution cost, the sequential diagnosis strategy obtained by previous methods is actually not optimal from the view of life cycle. In this paper, the test sequencing problem based on life cycle cost is presented. It is formulated as an optimization problem, which is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-hard). An algorithm and a strategy to improve its computational efficiency are proposed. The formulation and algorithms are tested on various simulated systems and comparisons are made with the extant test sequencing methods. Application on a pump rotational speed control (PRSC) system of a spacecraft is studied in detail. Both the simulation results and the real-world case application results suggest that the solution proposed in this paper can significantly reduce the life cycle cost of a sequential fault diagnosis strategy.