Condition Based Maintenance for Two-Component Systems with Reliability and Cost Considerations

This paper studies a maintenance policy for a system composed of twocomponents, which are subject to continuous deterioration andconsequently stochastic failure. The failure of each component resultsin the failure of the system. The components are inspected periodicallyand their deterioration degrees are monitored. The components can bemaintained using different maintenance actions (repair or replacement)with different costs. Using stochastic regenerative properties of thesystem, a stochastic model is developed in order to analyze thedeterioration process and a novel approach is presented thatsimultaneously determines the time between two successive inspectionperiods and the appropriate maintenance action for each of thecomponents based on the observed degrees of deterioration. Thisapproach considers different criteria like reliability and long-runexpected cost of the system. A numerical example is provided in orderto illustrate the implementation of the proposed approach.