Selective Maintenance on a Multistate System Executing Multiple Consecutive Missions Under Sequential Maintenance

A type of multistate system executes multiple consecutive missions over a period, and maintenance activities are also performed sequentially during this period, to improve system reliability during the consecutive missions. Sequential maintenance and dependence on the system state introduce new challenges for the calculation of system reliability during consecutive missions, which makes selective maintenance difficult to perform. In order to provide theoretical support for the selective maintenance of this type of multistate system and obtain a reasonable and effective selective maintenance strategy, a reliability calculation method is proposed for a multistate system that executes multiple consecutive missions under sequential maintenance. Based on this, a new selective maintenance model for a multistate system executing multiple consecutive missions is developed, and the ant colony optimization algorithm is customized to address the resulting maintenance strategy optimization problem. Finally, using an oil transportation system as an example, the accuracy and computational effectiveness of the proposed reliability calculation method are verified by comparison with the Monte–Carlo simulation method. Moreover, the selective maintenance strategy optimization is performed on the oil transportation system to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed selective maintenance model and the customized optimization method, and the results can provide practical guidance for the reasonable adjustment of mission durations.