Preventive Maintenance of k-out-of-n System with Dependent Failures

Abstract

The paper investigates a model of a k-out-of-n system, the residual lifetime of which changes after failures of any of its components. The problem of a Preventive Maintenance (PM) organization as advice to the Decision Maker (DM) for such a system is considered. The purpose of this paper is to propose a mathematical model of the k-out-of-n system to support DM about PM. For most practical applications, it is usually possible to estimate the lifetime distribution parameters of the system components with limited accuracy (only one or two moments), which is why special attention is paid to the sensitivity analysis of the system reliability characteristics and decisions about PM to the shape of system components lifetime distributions. In the numerical examples, we consider the 3-out-of-6 model discussed in our previous works for two real systems. The novelty, significance, and features of this study consist of the following, after the failure of one of the system components, the load on all the others increases, which leads to a decrease in their residual lifetime. We model this situation with order statistics and study the quality of PM strategies with respect to the availability maximization criterion. At the same time, we are focusing on the study of the sensitivity of decision-making to the type of lifetime distribution of system components.