Optimal Periodic Inspection Policy for a Parallel System Subject to Continuous Bi-Levels Degradation

Abstract

Each system goes through several intermediate states between its initial state and the failure state, which are called degradation states. In addition, knowing these intermediate states allows us the building of an effective maintenance plan for the system under consideration. In this paper, we have considered a two-component parallel system where each component is subjected to two levels of degradation. Our first objective is to identify the mathematical (probabilistic) model associated with this system and this when the hypothesis of periodic inspection of the system is retained. Then, the main idea is to build the economic model encompassing the different average costs (inspection costs, preventive maintenance costs and corrective maintenance costs) spent during a renewal cycle. The latter will allow us to determine the optimal “inspection interval” while minimizing the average global-cost spent. Finally, in order to illustrate and analyze the sensitivity of the optimal inspection policy to the various maintenance costs, numerical examples are presented.