Reliability modelling and maintenance policy optimization for a repairable parallel system

This paper proposes an integrated approach for reliability modelling and maintenance scheduling of repairable parallel systems subject to hidden failures. The system consists of heterogeneous redundant subsystems whose failures are revealed only by inspections. Inspections at periodic times reveal the components state and repair actions are decided by the excursion of a basic state process describing the total number of failed components in each subsystem. Using the standard renewal arguments, the paper aims at minimizing the average cost rate by the joint determination of the optimal inspection interval, the partial repair threshold and the preventive replacement threshold. We illustrate the procedure for the case as the components' lifetimes conform to the Weibull distribution. Numerical examples are used to illustrate the proposed model and the response of the optimal solutions to the model's parameters.