Abstract:

This article studies the one-unit discrete time repairable system with preventive maintenance. The unit life, preventive maintenance time, and corrective maintenance time are all assumed to be non-negative random variables with general distribution, and the maintenance is assumed to be perfect. The transition of the system states is analyzed, including the operational state, corrective repair state, and preventive maintenance state.Then the instantaneous availability model of the system is built, and several textbook examples are given to illustrate the proposed model. The results of the examples show that preventive maintenance can play an important role in improving the instantaneous availability of a one unit discrete time repairable system. In particular, preventive maintenance can improve the instantaneous availability of a system with increasing failure rate. Engineers can use the proposed model to search for better ways to understand their systems and logistic maintenance, and this model may find plentiful application in engineering practice.

Key words: availability, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, discrete time system, failure rate, repair rate