Assessment of maintenance policies for a multi-deterioration rates system

This paper compares two condition-based maintenance policies based on control limit maintenance decision rule. Each considered maintenance policy is adapted to the information collected through on-line monitoring. The concerned system gradually deteriorates and undergoes a change which leads to a sudden increase of its deterioration rate in a life cycle. In this study, a mathematical model is developed in order to assess the interest of change rate monitoring from the maintenance decision making point of view. Hence, the influence of information on the average long-run cost per time unit of the maintained system is investigated. The effectiveness of change mode monitoring is revealed through a numerical application. The obtained results lead to an optimized decision framework for gradually deteriorating systems with abrupt changes of degradation rate.