Performance deterioration modeling and optimal preventive maintenance strategy under scheduled servicing subject to mission time

Abstract

Servicing is applied periodically in practice with the aim of restoring the system state and prolonging the lifetime. It is generally seen as an imperfect maintenance action which has a chief influence on the maintenance strategy. In order to model the maintenance effect of servicing, this study analyzes the deterioration characteristics of system under scheduled servicing. And then the deterioration model is established from the failure mechanism by compound Poisson process. On the basis of the system damage value and failure mechanism, the failure rate refresh factor is proposed to describe the maintenance effect of servicing. A maintenance strategy is developed which combines the benefits of scheduled servicing and preventive maintenance. Then the optimization model is given to determine the optimal servicing period and preventive maintenance time, with an objective to minimize the system expected life-cycle cost per unit time and a constraint on system survival probability for the duration of mission time. Subject to mission time, it can control the ability of accomplishing the mission at any time so as to ensure the high dependability. An example of water pump rotor relating to scheduled servicing is introduced to illustrate the failure rate refresh factor and the proposed maintenance strategy. Compared with traditional methods, the numerical results show that the failure rate refresh factor can describe the maintenance effect of servicing more intuitively and objectively. It also demonstrates that this maintenance strategy can prolong the lifetime, reduce the total lifetime maintenance cost and guarantee the dependability of system.