Optimum maintenance policy of a periodically inspected system under imperfect repair

Abstract

This paper deals with the maintenance policy of a system subject to periodical inspections aimed at detecting the occurrence of failures. After the first N-1 failure, the system undergoes an imperfect repair that brings the system back to the operating condition while the N th failure is followed by a perfect repair restoring the unit to an as-good-as-new condition. The limiting average availability as well as the minimum cost policy are discussed. © 2009 F. G. Bad?́a and M. D. Berrade.