Adaptive maintenance window-based opportunistic maintenance optimization considering operational reliability and cost

Opportunistic maintenance (OM) reduces maintenance costs by combining the maintenance of multiple components. It has recently been widely used in complex systems. However, few studies have considered that advance maintenance results in the insufficient utilization of reliability. Besides, the applicable conditions for advance and postpone maintenance are ignored in existing literature. In this paper, the economic benefits and failure risk of advance and postpone maintenance are evaluated to fully utilize component's reliability. In addition, all maintenance types (preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, and replacement) and programs (advance and postpone maintenance) for critical components and non-critical components are discussed based on the degree of overlap of the components’ maintenance windows. Then, an operational reliability (OR) model based on system availability is established to reflect the operating state of the system under damage and maintenance. In order to maximize OR and minimize maintenance costs, a multi-objective optimization model for an OM strategy based on adaptive maintenance window is proposed. Finally, a case study of a propeller aircraft system is conducted to verify the proposed model. It proves superior to the traditional OM and other models in terms of cost and OR.