Analyze periodic inspection and replacement policy of a shock and wear model with phase-type inter-shock arrival times using roots method

Abstract

We consider a shock and wear model in which the inter-shock arrival process is a phase-type (PH) renewal process, and the system’s lifetime is generally distributed. The system has two competing failure modes. One failure mode is due to random shocks, which cause failure by overloading the system. The other failure mode is owning to wear-out failures, which usually happen after the system has run for many cycles. System failure is not self-announcing and remains undiscovered unless an inspection is performed. The intervals between successive inspections are identical and equal to T time units. If a system failure is detected, the corrective repair or replacement is conducted immediately. If the system is found working at inspection, preventive maintenance will be carried out to prolong its useful life. Furthermore, to model the occurrence of events with an underlying monotonic trend, the extended geometric process (EGP) is employed to account for the impact of different types of failures on the system’s degradation. Moreover, for establishing the cost rate function in our model, the counting process generated from a PH renewal shock process is studied in detail using the roots method and formula for calculating residues. Based on these results, the survival function and other characteristics of the system are further investigated. Finally, numerical examples that determine the optimal inspection period T ${}^{*}$ and the optimal replacement policy N ${}^{*}$ , which minimizes the long-run average cost rate, are presented.