Modeling systems with revealing and non-revealing failures undergoing periodic inspection

Abstract

In this study, the inspection policy for a single-unit randomly failing system with alternating operating and inactivity periods is proposed. Failures are detected instantly for the former case, whereas in the latter case, inspections are required for failure detection. This article focuses on evaluating the general expressions for limiting availability and long-run average cost of the system undergoing periodic inspections. The distinctive characteristic of the proposed model is that the inspections are not perfect. Furthermore, it is supposed that inspection and maintenance time are non-negligible, and corrective maintenance results in as good as new unit. The optimal inspection problem is developed predicated on maximizing the availability and minimizing the cost. Numerical example of electric motor corresponding to different life distributions is also presented to justify the obtained results.

Keywords:

• Availability
• non-revealing failure
• periodic inspection
• renewal cycle
• revealing failure

Acknowledgements

The work presented in this research paper was assisted by grants to the first author via Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) from Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), India.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research