Optimization of System Availability for a Multi-State Preventive Maintenance Model from the Perspective of a System’s Components

Abstract

This study aims at the multi-state degraded system with multi-state components to propose a novel approach of performance evaluation and a preventive maintenance model from the perspective of a system's components. The general non-homogeneous continuous-time Markov model (NHCTMM) and its analogous Markov reward model (NHCTMRM) are used to quantify the intensity of state transitions during the degradation process. Accordingly, the bound approximation approach is applied to solve the established NHCTMMs and NHCTM-RMs, thus evaluating system performance including system availability and total maintenance cost to overcome their inherent computational difficulties. Furthermore, this study adopts a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize a proposed preventive maintenance model. A simulation illustrates the feasibility and practicability of the proposed approach.

Generalized periodic replacement policies for repairable systems subject to two types of failures

“…Wang et al [27] extended the generalized age replacement policies for a single-unit system into a series system and a parallel system with 𝑛 non-identical components, where two types of failures for both systems were considered as well. Other maintenance policies on systems incorporated with two types of failures can be found [2,10,25,26]. The NHPP serves as an effective way to deal with different kinds of failures when system failure can be categorized into distinct types.…”