Opportunistic maintenance for multi-component systems considering structural dependence and economic dependence

Although opportunistic maintenance strategies are widely used for multi-component systems, all opportunistic maintenance strategies only consider economic dependence and do not take structural dependence into account. An opportunistic maintenance strategy is presented for a multi-component system that considers both structural dependence and economic dependence. The cost relation and time relation among components based on structural dependence are developed. The maintenance strategy for each component of a multi-component system involves one of five maintenance actions, namely, no-maintenance, a minimal maintenance action, an imperfect maintenance action, a perfect maintenance action, and a replacement action. The maintenance action is determined by the virtual age of the component, the life expectancy of the component, and the age threshold values. Monte Carlo simulation is designed to obtain the optimal opportunistic maintenance strategy of the system over its lifetime. The simulation result reveals that the minimum maintenance cost with a strategy that considers structural dependence is less than that with a strategy that does not consider structural dependence. The availability with a strategy that considers structural dependence is greater than that with a strategy that does not consider structural dependence under the same conditions.