Assessment of the maintenance cost and analysis of availability measures in a finite life cycle for a system subject to competing failures

Abstract: This paper deals with the assessment of the performance of a system under a finite planning horizon. The system is subject to two dependent causes of failure: internal degradation and sudden shocks. We assume that internal degradation follows a gamma process. When the deterioration level of the degradation process exceeds a predetermined value, a degradation failure occurs. Sudden shocks arrive at the system following a doubly stochastic Poisson process (DSPP). A sudden shock provokes the total breakdown of the system. A condition-based maintenance (CBM) with periodic inspection times is developed. To evaluate the maintenance cost, recursive methods combining numerical integration and Monte Carlo simulation are developed to evalute the expected cost rate and its standard deviation. Also, recursive methods to calculate some transient measures of the system are given. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the analytical results.