A condition-based maintenance model with past-dependent imperfect preventive repairs for continuously deteriorating systems

Abstract

Most condition-based imperfect maintenance models developed over the last few decades are memoryless in the sense that maintenance efficiency is completely [Formula: see text]-independent of previous interventions. However, many maintenance activities exhibit their past dependency in engineering practice, and this significant property should not be ignored in maintenance modeling. In this spirit, our aim is to develop a condition-based maintenance model for continuously deteriorating systems subject to a special kind of past-dependent imperfect repairs. Such a repair can put the system back to a deterioration level better than the one at just before the current repair, but worse than the one reached at the last repair. Besides, inspection and replacement are memoryless actions available for the system. They result in different effects on the system deterioration and incur different costs. To achieve high economic performances in the long term, these actions are coordinated into a control-limit deterioration-based maintenance policy. Its long-run maintenance cost rate is analytically evaluated using the semi-regenerative process theory. Numerous sensitivity studies to maintenance costs and to system characteristics give a thorough understanding about the policy behavior. Furthermore, comparisons with more classical policies justify the importance of incorporating the past dependency in maintenance modeling.