A Novel Subtraction-Based Algorithm for Finding d -MCs for All Possible d

Reliability serves as a fundamental indicator for evaluating the performance of multi-state flow networks (MFNs).d-minimal cuts (d-MCs) are recognized as one of the most efficient tools for MFN reliability assessment. Findingd-MCs for all possible d plays a vital role in capturing the whole picture of MFN reliability. The existing method is grounded on the addition of (d−1)-MCs and a unit vector to generate d-MCs for all possibled. In contrast, this article proposes a novel method based on the subtraction of (d+1) MCs and a unit vector to obtaind-MCs for all possible d with enhanced computational performance. To date, this study is the first to explore the subtraction-based method for thedMCs for all possibledproblem. Numerical experiments confirm that the proposed subtraction-based method is more efficient in comparison with the well-known addition-based method.