Optimization of System Availability for a Multi-State Preventive Maintenance Model from the Perspective of a System’s Components

¹ Department of Power Vehicle and Systems Engineering, Chung Cheng Institute of Technology, National Defense University No.75, Shiyuan Rd., Daxi Township, Tauyuan County 33551, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
² Department of Applied Science, R.O.C. Naval Academy No.669, Junxiao Rd., Zuoying District, Kaohsiung City 81345, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
k6100020@yahoo.com.tw

Received: 17 February 2014
Accepted: 13 January 2015

Abstract

This study aims at the multi-state degraded system with multi-state components to propose a novel approach of performance evaluation and a preventive maintenance model from the perspective of a system’s components. The general non-homogeneous continuous-time Markov model (NHCTMM) and its analogous Markov reward model (NHCTMRM) are used to quantify the intensity of state transitions during the degradation process. Accordingly, the bound approximation approach is applied to solve the established NHCTMMs and NHCTMRMs, thus evaluating system performance including system availability and total maintenance cost to overcome their inherent computational difficulties. Furthermore, this study adopts a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize a proposed preventive maintenance model. A simulation illustrates the feasibility and practicability of the proposed approach.