Application of Hierarchical Colored Petri Nets for Technological Facilities’ Maintenance Process Evaluation

Abstract

The high reliability of modern engineering systems is achieved by performing predictive maintenance. Mathematical models based on stochastic timed colored Petri nets are an effective tool for developing complex production processes for Industry 4.0. This article discusses the maintainability evaluation used in hierarchical Petri net models. The hierarchical simulation model was built using timed colored Petri nets, and was constructed with four levels of repair and maintenance modules. New module structures are proposed for simulating the schedule of production tasks and interaction with technological units. The emphasis is on the processes of predicting maintenance and repair, moving units to service, replacing units, and forming a reserve. The design of the simulation modules allows the setting of probabilistic parameters for the distributions of equipment failures, requests for unit maintenance, repair time, and recovery time after repair. The article proposes to use the hierarchical Petri model in conjunction with solving the problem of minimizing the cost of service. The iterative procedure consists of obtaining an approximate unit distribution by tasks, subsequent simulation of the technological process, and adjusting the optimization problem constraints. For example, the hierarchical Petri net is considered to assess the maintainability of autonomous agricultural vehicles. The results of the simulation experiments are presented. A simulation of the agrotechnical production process was performed, during which vehicles were maneuvered, taken out for repair or maintenance, and returned to the reserve fund. The interdependencies of preventive maintenance periods, service operations, failure rates, and predictive maintenance requests were obtained in order to comply with the task scheduling. The proposed model is a generalization, but it is especially effective in studying mobile equipment servicing.