A dependent complex degrading system with non-periodic inspection times

Abstract

This paper analyses a system subject to multiple dependent degradation processes. Degradation processes start at random times following a non homogeneous Poisson process and next dependently propagate. The growth of these degradation processes is modeled using gamma increments. We assume that the arrival of a new process to the system triggers the degradation rate of the processes present in the system. Under this framework, the analytic expression of the system reliability is obtained and bounds of the system reliability are also analyzed. Furthermore, the system is inspected at certain times. Information on the system health is recorded at these inspection times and the decision on performing maintenance actions on the system is taken at these times. We consider in this paper a dynamic inspection policy since the information that becomes available in an inspection time is taken into account to schedule the next inspection time. The maintenance cost for this system is dealt with the use of semi-regenerative process. Numerical examples are performed to illustrate the analytic expressions.