Reliability Centered Maintenance of Repairable Equipment

This work reviews several approaches to analysis of repairable systems failure/repair history in order to obtain estimates of reliability measures useful for making conscious maintenance/ preventive replacement decisions. These approaches are based on empirical models of reliability of repairable systems (including MFC curves, Duane power-law model, etc). We also discuss how these models of reliability can be extended to modeling the effect of maintenance, which can be very useful for maintenance policy optimization. The concepts discussed are illustrated by numerical examples based on real repair records from technical systems and probabilistic models pertaining to power station equipment.