Reliability Variation and Optimal Age Replacement Schedule of Compensated Discrete Multi-state Systems

Abstract

In industrial engineering, a compensatory system is often installed to compensate for some performances of an important system or device, reducing the influence of catastrophic failures and extending the operation period. In this paper, we divide the system state space into three parts according to a performance degradation threshold, set a quantitative measurement for each deteriorating state and arrange an appropriate age replacement maintenance policy for a degradation multi-state system exhibiting finite output states. An illustrative example of a bulk electric power system is presented to verify the results obtained, showing the significance of introducing a compensatory system.