A Condition-based Maintenance Model for Availability Optimization for Stochastic Degrading Systems

This paper proposes a condition-based maintenance approach for availability optimization problem. The system to be maintained is subject to stochastic degradations and assumed to be continuously monitored. Imperfect preventive maintenance actions are made on the basis of the hybrid hazard model and the condition to perform a preventive maintenance corresponds to a system reliability threshold. After a number of preventive maintenance cycles, the system is replaced by a new one. The maintenance optimization problem to be solved consists on finding the optimal reliability threshold together with the optimal number of preventive maintenance cycles to maximize the average system availability. A mathematical model is proposed and numerically solved. A numerical example is provided for illustration.