Condition-Based Maintenance Optimization Method Using Performance Margin

As a maintenance strategy to reduce unexpected failures and enable safe operation, condition-based maintenance (CBM) has been widely used in recent years. The maintenance decision criteria of CBM in the literature mostly originate from statistical failure data or degradation states, few of which can directly and effectively reflect the current state and analyze condition monitoring data, maintenance measures, and reliability together at the same time. In this paper, we introduce the performance margin as a decision criterion of CBM. We propose a condition-based maintenance optimization method using performance margin. Considering a CBM optimization problem for a degrading and periodically inspected component, a newly developed performance margin degradation model is established when three different maintenance measures become involved. Maintenance measure effect factors, maintenance decision vectors, and maintenance measure threshold vectors are developed to update the degradation model. And to build a maintenance optimization model, both cost and loss related to maintenance decision problems and reliability obtained by performance margin have been taken into consideration. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed optimization method.